Priority
by nneurosis
Summary: It was never going to be a one-night stand. Modern AU.
1. Chapter 1

**This fic grew out of a prompt from a post of airport-related AUs on Tumblr: "I made a horrible first impression at the gate or in line for airport food but now we're sitting next to each other au."**

**What it turned into is an occasionally angsty, mostly romcom-esque modern excuse for me to write some ridiculous smut and bantering.**

**Warnings for mentions of cancer and some very strong language and sexual content.**

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><p>Through security, across the terminal, and to the gate. Fifteen minutes until the doors closed. Fifteen minutes between him and not making this flight—he had it in the bag. He could do this! Hiccup Haddock could <em>do this<em>. The next flight wasn't until tomorrow morning, so really, he had to. And he'd been blessed by the randomizing algorithm in the airport computer system; in the corner of his boarding pass it read: TSA PRE-CHECK PRIORITY BOARDING_. _Oh yeah. He could _do this_.

The regular security line was one of those zigzagging, bloated, unmoving monsters—he went through the second, smaller entrance, ducked under the ropes of two or three empty rows, and only stood about ten feet from the TSA officer checking board passes and IDs right before the wall of metal detectors and body scanners. There was only one middle-aged guy and his tiny briefcase between Hiccup and that x-ray machine. He sucked in a relieved breath and tried to ignore the outraged stares of the people in the normal line to his right.

Another TSA officer appeared, and muttered something to his colleague that Hiccup just barely overheard: "…going to take breaks, we're closing this line. Only take a couple more and then close it up and send the rest down to C." And then the colleague went on his way.

_Shit_. Hiccup glanced between himself and the regular line, doing the math. If the officer was alternating lines, and a woman from the regular line was stepping up, and the middle-aged man went right behind her—it wasn't his turn. He'd have to go to C, wherever C was.

Panicking, he leapt after briefcase guy, cutting off the next person from the regular line—

"Excuse me?"

A feminine voice from behind him. He swung around, already on the defensive as he handed the TSA officer his boarding pass and license.

"Listen, I'm sorry, my plane leaves—" He stumbled: there was a very angry, very attractive young blonde woman glaring at him. "—my flight leaves in like twelve minutes!"

"So does mine!" she cried, doing nothing to disguise her anger. Yeah, very, very attractive. The people in line behind her cringed, uncomfortable.

The TSA officer waved her off. "No more on this line, ma'am, we're transferring everyone down to the next checkpoint."

"I was in front of him in line!"

"I've got priority boarding," Hiccup explained, backing away from her and into the security area, where he tossed his duffel on the conveyor belt. Cool how he'd gone from pissing off hot women in his daily life to pissing off hot women in random airport encounters!

"_Priority boarding_?" she shouted, half at Hiccup and half at the TSA officer, "What, so some rich jerk gets to make me miss my flight?"

Hiccup swung back to face her, throwing his hands up. "I'm not rich, lady, it's totally random."

"Fine, maybe you're not rich, but you're still a fucking _jerk_!" Behind her, a woman made a small affronted noise at her language. The TSA guy was looking alarmed but uncertain, like he'd been trained for a lot of things but not an irate, shortish blonde woman swearing loudly at another passenger.

Hiccup started tearing off his shoes, unable to fight a grin—a part of him felt weirdly _satisfied_, victorious over this disgruntled stranger. "Sorry, lady," he called back to her, and she gasped in fury at his smugness.

"Can you _believe_ this guy?" she demanded of the TSA officer, who only shrugged perfunctorily.

"He's priority, ma'am."

As she was herded away with the rest of the line, Hiccup heard her say, "Yeah, what man isn't?"

Well. He fought off a twinge of guilt as an agent patted him down.

But it was hard to keep stewing in regret when he settled into his seat on the plane, out of breath and a bit sweaty after sprinting halfway across the airport to his gate, but _here_. He'd done it. And he had the only empty seat on the plane right next to him, which meant he could let his aching knee stretch out a bit. He pulled out his phone, set it in airplane mode, and then got out his sketchbook. He had about a dozen ideas for an ad campaign he'd just been signed on to, maybe a could he'd pursue, he wanted to have something to show the client by the end of the week.

A passing stewardess mentioned that the doors were closed and the last passenger had just made it, and Hiccup glanced forlornly at the empty seat beside him. So much for legroom. At the front of the plane, someone said, "Welcome aboard, miss." Hiccup drew a few shapes on an empty page. The company wanted something clean and modern, they said. Made him think geometric.

"Hello, _priority_."

His head snapped up. There, standing in the aisle by his empty seat, was the woman from security.

_Fuck me_, he thought desperately. She grinned but did not look very happy. More of a serial killer, you-wronged-me-and-now-I-will-bathe-in-your-blood kind of grin.

"Ooooh," he choked out, "Heeeey. You made it!"

"No thanks to you," she said, still smiling. Her voice dripped with false pleasantry. She reached up and shoved her weekender into the overhead bin—he wasn't going to look at her ass.

He looked at her ass.

As he'd suspected, it was awesome. She had an awesome ass. Yeah. Of course.

She swung into the seat beside him and he saw she had even more awesome… things: huge blue eyes, curls of soft yellow hair, ruddy cheeks. Stuff he couldn't process earlier, on account of her screaming at him. She wore a blue sweater that stretched over her chest, a nice-sized chest for a thinner woman, but she was sort of curvy, she had hips too. Couldn't have been much younger than him, maybe twenty-four or twenty-five? Hiccup hadn't gotten laid in three months, so this was all very keenly, pathetically horrible for him.

"Wow, and now you're staring at my tits, are you going for some kind of douchebag of the month award?"

When he looked up, her smile had morphed into a grimace. He glanced at the emergency exit a few rows down and wondered if this was an appropriate occasion to escape on that big yellow slide. "God. I'm sorry."

"Pft." She drew a book from her backpack and kicked it under the seat, but didn't say anything else.

Somehow he couldn't handle that this beautiful, smart (he didn't know how he knew she was smart, he just _did_) woman thought he was a… douchebag. That was her word, douchebag. He wasn't, he knew he wasn't, he'd just cut a few corners and accidentally let his eyes wander. Not a great first impression, but not an accurate one, either.

"Whatcha readin'?" he asked, running a nervous hand over the cover of his sketchbook.

She paused. Didn't look at him, but he could see that her eyes had stopped moving over the page. She replied, slowly, "_Teaching to transgress_." The plane had started to taxi.

"Ah," he said, not having a response. He had sort of hoped it was some Dan Brown novel. "What's it about?"

She still didn't glance up. "Are you going to insist on talking to me through the whole flight? Because I'll call the flight attendant." Without looking, she raised a hand above them, to the call button. He felt intimidated and, oddly, interested.

"Will you let me apologize, then?" Yeah. It was good to cut the bullshit, less messy.

Snapping her book shut, she straightened and glared. "Only if you acknowledge that I've got no obligation to accept it."

"I do."

"Then go ahead."

He nodded, gulped, and did his best. "I'm sorry I was so inconsiderate in the security line, it _was _your turn and I should've let you go. And I'm very pleased you made the flight in spite of my stupidity. And I'm sorry for the unsolicited…" Ogling didn't seem like a good word to use here. "Attention. Yep. I'm Hiccup, by the way," he said, extending a hand, "In case you wanted to put a name to the douchebag. Which, maybe you didn't! But now you can be more specific when you report me, or whatever."

The woman stared at his hand for a beat. "Hiccup's not a name."

"Okay, obviously it's a _nickname_, but everyone calls me that."

She looked at him frankly. "What good is a nickname when I report you?"

"I mean, if you yell 'Hiccup' in a crowded place, I'm the only person who's going to stand up."

Her mouth twisted into something that might've been a smile, but she caught herself in it and cleared her throat. "Okay then."

"Are you going to accept it?"

She tapped the cover of her book with a clean, unmanicured nail. "Yeah. Sure. Accepted."

"Thank you," he said, and settled back in his seat, already feeling a bit less like the goofy jackass character on a sitcom. At least he could pass this flight knowing he'd done what he could to repair things with his accidental traveling companion.

"Astrid."

The sound of her voice—a little softer, less angry, less guarded—jolted him, he sat forward and peered over at her. She was looking up the aisle, avoiding his gaze.

"What?"

"I'm Astrid."

Astrid. The glimmer of shyness gave him a weird hope, an idea that he should—do something. Anything.

He slipped his sketchbook back into his back and turned to her, smiling. "So, Astrid, what do you do for a living?"

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><p>Astrid stared at the little piece of paper he extended her way, black beveled letters in a sleek typeset. A name, an email, a phone number.<p>

"Are you going to take it?" asked the guy, sounding amused. He had a freckle on his thumb. The line cutter. The breast starer. The really, extraordinarily good-looking fast talker with whom she'd just spent an hour and a half bantering, though it felt like twenty minutes. His jawline was unreal.

She snatched the business card from his hand, and tossed a glance outside—Ruff was waiting in the parking lot to drive her back to the apartment. She couldn't dawdle. "_Holden Haddock_," she read, and snorted. "Holden."

Hiccup—yeah, weirdly enough, Hiccup was better for him—pulled a face. "I put it on there for professional stuff, don't…"

She flicked the card absently, eyeing him. She'd taken it but there was a slight awkwardness as he shifted from leg to leg, like maybe he had something else to say.

"You busy tonight?"

There it was.

Astrid put a show into hesitating, and he shook his head.

"Okay, you know what, I won't make you decide—I _know _I'm going to be in the hotel bar tonight with a scotch and soda." He slipped the card back from her hand, fingers brushing the base of her thumb. "Let me give you the name of the place." When he pulled a pen from his pants pocket, her eyes were drawn to his crotch; Astrid swallowed hard.

He started trying to write on the back of the card against his thigh, but winced and straightened right away—she stepped forward, offering the surface of her shoulder. "Here." They used to do that in middle school, scribble notes on one another's backs. She felt him pause, before the card met the softness of her sweater and the pen moved against her. The paper rectangle, newly marked, reappeared in her palm.

"Nine o'clock. If you wanna come by and continue our conversation. Otherwise," he said, laying a hand across his (taut, perfectly proportioned) chest, "Yours truly will be drinking alone. As he often does. Except that makes me sound kind of sad, so forget I said it!" She laughed once, surprised to find him so… yeah. "See you, then. Maybe. If not, have a good life—" He gave her a wide, gorgeous grin as he backed away, and said her name with weird reverence, "Astrid." As Hiccup jogged in the direction of the taxi stand, she nodded and waved.

And watched his ass while he went. Fucking hell. She stuffed the card into her pocket and went to find her ride.

The firm that had hired him picked a bougie, hip boutique hotel, probably because they thought they needed to put their bougie, hip creative talent up in a fitting establishment.

He'd gone and dumped his bag on the bed and showered off the griminess of the plane right away. He watched the news while his hair dried and got dressed: jeans, a button-down, a cardigan. Like a typical Silicon Valley jagoff. At 8:55, he went down to the hotel bar—very edgy, suede-topped barstools and a long counter of some thick clear stone, with a layer of black shining through from the bottom. Hiccup ordered a scotch and soda and spent the next ten minutes trying to figure out what the fuck that counter was all about, rather than thinking about the relative emptiness of the room—rather than wondering if tonight it would just be the three businessmen muttering to one another at the other end of the bar, and the two young artists cozying up at a corner booth, and him. The bartender, who paradoxically wore a slick black shirt and had a large bushy beard, cleaned glasses a ways down from Hiccup and did not make eye contact.

Finally, around 9:08, the bartender's eyes went to the entrance, and Hiccup's heart punched into his throat as he turned to see who'd arrived.

"He's buying my drink."

Thank fuck. Astrid—_Astrid_, what an incredible name, like a goddamn princess—sidled on to the stool beside him. The bartender glanced at Hiccup. "Yeah, I am."

"And I'll have your most expensive glass of white." The guy disappeared to get her drink and he bit back a laugh. No surprises there.

Astrid seemed almost determined not to acknowledge his presence. She wore a slinky, curve-hugging black dress, short on the leg, low on the chest, and heels. A date outfit. Her blonde hair was up with a few choice tendrils falling down her cheeks. And red lipstick. He grinned into his scotch and soda.

"You really don't look like a women's studies PhD candidate, you know."

She still didn't look at him, but raised an eyebrow. "You thinking that women's studies PhD candidates look a certain way is the reason we need women's studies PhD candidates."

"You're very witty, you know."

"Stop complimenting me."

"Why?"

"Because you didn't compliment me before and I like being mean to you."

This time, he laughed. He liked this game. The bartender returned and set a huge glass of wine in front of Astrid, and he moved away down the bar, leaving them alone. She took two gulps right away. Hiccup's eyes ran down her neck, her back, to the hem of her dress and the soft white thigh it rode up. Thought of wrapping those legs around himself. "You're unbelievably beautiful," he told her.

She grimaced. "I bet you weren't this confident when you were fifteen."

He was still smiling, but it did give him pause. Had he met a siren? "How…"

"You just carry yourself like someone who hasn't always been hot but is really going for it now that he is." Hiccup couldn't help the leaping sensation in his chest. He downed the rest of his scotch.

"So you think I'm hot?"

"Obviously I think you're hot," she said, with a glare. She even glared prettily. "Would I be here if I didn't think you were hot? Do you think I like you?" Which implied that she was here because… Hiccup sat back, grinning. Sayonara, three month dry spell! Sayonara, pain and misery!

"I don't know, I thought we had a pretty good talk on the plane."

"You made me almost miss my flight."

"You accepted my apology."

"That doesn't mean anything."

"I think it means something," he said, leaning toward her. Astrid glanced at him sideways, and took another—maybe nervous—sip of wine, eyes trailing away from him and down the bar.

"I think people who hang out in bars like this must be lonely," she said lightly.

"Bars like this?" he repeated, even though he knew what she meant. He stayed close to her, kept an arm on the counter.

"Yeah." She glanced around, disdaining the high ceilings and glittery mod lighting. "This isn't a fun bar, where you'd go with friends. This is—they charge you fifteen dollars for a martini and won't even turn on the heat." The skin on her arms prickled and she shrunk with a little shiver. So he rubbed his palm over her forearm, quickly—her skin was soft. Astrid glanced up, their eyes met really properly for the first time since she'd arrived. Their arms twisted together, his fingers resting in the crook of hers, just brushing the invisible hairs there. Her lips parted—red, red lips, he wanted to be finding red lipstick all over himself come the morning.

Astrid cleared her throat and tugged her arm away from him, turning to stare back down the bar.

He caught the bartender's eye and gestured to his empty scotch and her nearly depleted wine, and the guy nodded once.

"Switching to your most expensive bourbon," she called after him, perfunctory.

"You're probably right," said Hiccup, with his best inflated sigh, pulling away from her in a show of defeat—he noted that she moved an inch toward him in reply, looking a little disappointed—_ha_. "We're lonely. Sad. Wonder how we're going to fix that."

"I _am_ lonely."

Hiccup's head snapped up. The bartender returned with their second round and retreated even further away, this time. He had on an expression of trained blankness, like he was deaf to the conversations of his customers—made Hiccup wonder what sort of people he got in here. But Astrid… "I was kidding."

"I'm not." She stared at the wall of liquor bottles glinting behind the bar. "I don't do… this." She threw a look his way, and she didn't need to clarify. It suddenly occurred to him—how had he forgotten this?—that they'd only met this afternoon. "Not since undergrad, anyway. Thought I was a grown-up now. A _dater_," she sneered into her wine.

"I'll be an amputee in six months."

He heard the words come out of his mouth but didn't remember deciding to say them.

Somehow it just seemed like the right thing to do.

Astrid stared at him, her face opened by the astonishment and instant devastation, but he could only think how pretty she was like that—wide-eyed, mouth peeping open, a little color in her cheeks.

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah. Osteosarcoma in my left leg. It's all they can do."

Anger flashed across her face. "Are you fucking with me?"

"No."

And the anger was gone. She retreated to her wine, took a long drink, worried her lip. He saw lipstick on her fingertips. Maybe she didn't wear lipstick that much, seemed like she'd forgotten she was wearing it. "Is that painful?"

"Excruciating," he said cheerfully, sipping his drink. "Though, my knee's been hurting the most, lately. I get to keep my knee. I think it's saying it's going to miss my foot."

"Jesus fucking Christ," said Astrid, turning to him in a snap of anger, "Why'd you tell me that? You want a pity fuck or something?" He put a fast hand on her shoulder, and raised his other reassuringly. He'd freaked her out.

"No, no, I just thought it might make you feel better about being lonely."

"Well it doesn't, it just makes me feel like my problems aren't real." She put her head in her hands, elbows on the counter.

"I'm sure they're perfectly legitimate problems," he offered, pausing so that she might elaborate, but she only finished the glass of wine. He figured he shouldn't mention that he'd gotten this amputation news two days ago, and had yet to inform his family and friends. That was the lonely bit, the thing that'd made him think of it. Hiccup sat up and ran a hand through his hair. "We both know you're not going to fuck me out of pity."

"What makes you think I'm going to fuck you at all?" she replied, though the hand covering half her mouth muted its venom.

"You came here because you find me attractive. Not because you like me, because you want to talk." He added, to himself, "Though we've done plenty of that."

She drew in a breath that brought his eyes to her breasts: lovely, milky, nearly spilling out of her dress while she leaned over the counter. "Yeah." Astrid sat up, her wicked red mouth a hard line. "I don't care if you have cancer or the plague," she said, grabbing his hand and laying it against her thigh. Instinctively, he slid his palm toward the hem of her dress, not fighting the smirk. "I don't like you. Less talking."


	2. Chapter 2

**Smut warning. Very sex! So smut.**

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><p>The door to the hotel room slammed open and they stumbled into the darkness, a panting tangle of limbs.<p>

"I told you to talk less," Astrid grunted into his hair.

He ripped his lips from her collarbone long enough to say, "You're the one that's talking."

"Telling you to shut up."

"Not my fault you argue with everything I say." She kicked the door closed behind them and it was pitch black but for the sliver of streetlight peeking through the half-open curtain across the room. Astrid felt herself pressed against the wall of the little foyer, big wide hands worrying the fabric at her hips, as he tongued the hollow of her clavicle and dragged his mouth down between her breasts, disturbing her low décolletage.

"I don't argue," she said, with a deep breath, starting on the buckle of his belt. His jeans were tight around the crotch. "You're picking fights."

"Maybe there's nothing worth shutting up for." He sucked the sensitive skin above her breast.

"Back at you," she gasped.

She felt his palm against her thigh, pushing up her hem, the touch exhilarating—she made a small noise, and he pulled away with a snicker. "Tell you what," he breathed, lips very near hers, "Astrid—it's Astrid, right?"

"Oh, you've got my name memorized, asshole."

He laughed softly. He had green eyes; she couldn't see them in the dark but she recalled them from the plane that afternoon. Hard to look away. "If you keep talking all night, through everything, I'll believe you."

"Believe me?"

"That I'm what you say I am. A douchebag," he smirked. Smug fucker. She'd take care of that.

"What's the winner get?" she replied, licking her lips deliberately. His eyes fell to the motion, mesmerized.

"I'm not playing."

"Why, because you know you're not going to be able to handle fucking me?"

"All right," he said, leaning into her, "Fine. What's the winner get?"

"Oral." She nearly laughed at the look on his face, like he could come at the thought. "Or the loser has to tell their friends this happened."

"Oral," he murmured, and his hands were back on her, pressing her into the wall, squeezing her breasts and then her thighs. He kissed her firmly, tongue just brushing the roof of her mouth, and she shivered in the cold room and shoved a hand down the front of his boxers. Hiccup groaned into her mouth.

"Not off to a good start," she snickered, doing her best to grip his length and pump within the confines of his jeans, while he panted by her ear.

"Says—who?" As if to prove something, he reached up the back of her dress and grabbed her ass hard, and Astrid bit her lip. This needed to happen soon, fast, she was uncomfortably wet. She pushed down his pants just enough to free his erection. "Here?" he muttered, but he was already bunching the dress up around her waist. The bed sat ten feet away but she didn't even glance at it.

"Yeah. Condom." He pulled one out of his back pocket without a second's hesitation. "Wow, you aren't even going to pretend like you weren't carrying that around?" she snorted, shoving his stupid cardigan off his shoulders—nothing sexy about a cardigan.

"No, I felt pretty confident about you," he said, in the same way that you'd say, _No, you're a whore_.

She took the condom and tore it open, maybe a little too harshly. "You really are a douchebag."

"Then we deserve each other."

Astrid threw the open wrapper at him. "You put it on." He did, stepping away from her for a moment, and she felt more naked than naked—her dress wrinkled, her hair falling out of its bun, heels in a heap on the floor. Dampness leaking down her thighs and chilling her skin, about to let some stranger have her against a wall in a hotel room. Maybe she'd regret this, but when he turned and hoisted her up and clawed her underwear aside to thrust into her—without much warning or ceremony—she cried, "_Fuck_," and instinct took over.

"Swearing doesn't count," he said in a strained voice, thrusting again, hips driving her ass into the hard surface at her back. "Or screaming my name."

"Why would I—" Another thrust, a gasp forced its way out of her. "—scream your dumb name?" He set a rhythm, now, fairly fast, probably as fast as he could manage while supporting her weight. She looped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, securing them. He was stronger than he looked but he'd started to sweat through his shirt, and she could feel the sheen on her own neck.

"You wouldn't be able to help it."

She dug her fingers into his shoulder. "Your name isn't hot."

"Then—ah, you can just scream."

"In your dreams."

"Yeah, you would."

He lifted her a little and a thrust made her muscles flinch—she moaned rather forcefully, and Hiccup raised her more, driving in and out, whetting the climax. She swore again.

As it mounted, he met her gaze with a wicked grin. "Ready to scream?" She almost rolled her eyes.

"Are you?" Holding the gaze, she raised her forefinger and thumb to her lips, sucked, and shoved her hand between them to work her clit in tandem with his thrusts. The smugness melted from his face—he fucked her harder, serious, turned on. The movement hastened, her muscles contorted, the thing tore through her and she bit down hard on the scream that did indeed want to climb from the deep guttural need in her chest.

"Scream," he whispered urgently into her neck, and she could hear he was almost there too, his grip on her thighs tightening. Fuck this guy, fuck him so much. Fuck this day, fuck that she'd let this happen and that she was descending into an orgasm she felt crawling down her limbs, addling her brain. Fuck how much she liked it—the damp locks of hair clinging to his forehead and the way he held her with such certainty and the dangle of her feet half a foot above the floor and the fact that they hadn't even taken the time to get their goddamn clothes off. There was something deliciously fantastical about this whole evening.

"No," she managed.

"_Scream_," he insisted, knowing she was spinning over the edge but needing to hear it.

"No," she said again, voice hitching up, right before it finally tore out of her: the scream, long and hoarse, and he groaned loudly too, bucking into her, eyes screwed shut at the force of his own climax. When the scream was done, Astrid laughed—stupid, he wanted her to scream so he'd feel powerful and he'd gone and lost control—he slid her back to the floor. She came down from it sucking in deep breaths, and Hiccup did too, keeping his head low. He pulled out, and went to work carefully removing the condom and tucking himself back into his pants; Astrid loped toward the minifridge, loose-limbed and thirsty.

"What was that, seven minutes?" she asked smugly, bending over to peek into the fridge. "What kind of sex god are you?" She was examining a nip of bourbon when she felt hands on her waist, and his hips pressing against her ass, grinding. So he liked it from behind, okay—she made a mental note to use it against him.

"Round one," he muttered, "Warm up."

She popped up and swung around, forcing a little bottle into his palm with a smirk. "Being good in bed is probably another compensation for being an ugly kid, right?" She left him to flop back on to the bed.

He ignored the comment, opening the drink and downing it in two gulps. Jaw flinching, which was good, he came to the edge of the bed and stood over her. "I don't like that you're still wearing that dress."

"You're not hard, you can't do anything," she pointed out, nudging his crotch with her foot.

Now he was grinning. She liked the grins almost as much as wiping them off his face. "I think you're underestimating me."

She shrugged, and opened her nip as he pulled off her underwear, finally, and shot it across the room like rubber band. Astrid chortled and sat up enough to take a long drink. He leaned on the bed beside her and slid a hand under her skirt, toying lazily with her clit and then curling two fingers into her. Smiling, she finished the drink and let him work—he watched her, lips parted in concentration. He wanted to do something that would get her, would force her expression from contentment to admiration, or lust, to erase the knowingness playing at her mouth.

"This is sweet," she said, lying back. He knew what he was doing, she could tell, but it was a little anticlimactic after an extremely satisfying encounter with his cock.

"Sweet?" he repeated, not sounding as cowed by her tone as she would've hoped. He sped up the machinations of his hand. "Does that mean I'm winning you over?"

"Not really." She slid into an orgasm, gentler than the one before, but a low moan escaped her. Hiccup looked pleased, flicking her clit with his thumb.

"You think I'm sweet," he said happily, over her little pants, "Oh, _Astrid_. You're so pretty. Will you be my girlfriend?"

It was partly the midst of coming and partly the childlike sincerity of his voice, but she didn't realized he was kidding until she'd already gasped loudly, gaping up at him, and he cackled with the glow of victory. She finished blushing brightly, embarrassed at the weird, extraneous kick of delight she'd gotten, the feeling that had nothing to do with orgasm. Damn, she _was _lonely. All flattered by… cancer guy. Christ. She wiped her face on her arm and Hiccup drew his hand away, still laughing. Tomorrow she would tell Ruff yes to that blind date, the one with the personal trainer. Steve or Scott or something.

"Maybe I _am_ a sex god, but I have to say, not many girls get off on the idea of dating me," Hiccup sneered, sitting on the edge of the bed. She glanced at his crotch and could see the start of a new bulge there—good. She wanted to get this over with. Astrid pulled herself up and worked at the buttons of his shirt. In reply he kissed her—for all his teasing, it was sweet, it was a sweet kiss. She liked it and hated that she liked it, so she shoved her tongue into his mouth just as she freed him of his shirt. He had a good, smooth, wiry torso. She could just barely make out a swath of freckles across his shoulders.

Astrid climbed to her feet, gesturing at him. "Help me do the zipper," she said, indicating her dress. He hopped up and obliged, helping her out of the garment, which she doubted she'd ever want to wear again, for all the trouble it had gotten her into.

"Let me get another…" When she glanced over her shoulder, he was delving into the bag in the corner. Another condom. Right. She slipped the dress off and did away with her bra, then lay down across the bed, making sure to pop her ass up slightly, off the mattress. She'd get back the upper hand, this didn't have to be his victory lap after the girlfriend incident.

And indeed, she heard him hiss a moment later, and looking back could see him staring at her with a fixed desire.

She grinned. "I knew you wanted to bend me over."

"Who wouldn't?" he asked quietly, coming toward the bed, dragging off his jeans. The calmness she found a little unsettling—she had hoped he'd be flustered, not quite so… ready.

"There are plenty of men in this world who don't obsess over sexual dominance."

"Who says I obsess over it?" he replied, in that same calm, focused voice. "I enjoy it. I enjoy a lot of things. Meditation. Vegan baking."

Astrid shot him a look over her shoulder, trying not to laugh; he was at the edge of the bed now, staring down at her. "'Vegan' and 'baking' has to be the least sexy combination of words I've ever heard."

"All right," he said, a little grumpy, and laid a hand on her ass.

She quickly rolled over. "Hold on. Who says I want to be dominated?"

The frustration in his eyes was genuine, and weirdly, a little heartbreaking. "Fuck you, honestly." She sucked her bottom lip. She didn't mind it from behind, sometimes the orgasms felt different in a good way, but she hated the power dynamic it demanded. She hated _dominance_ when it wasn't hers. What was this whole night about if not power?

"I'll make you a deal," she said, leaning forward to drag his boxers off his hips. "I come on top of you, you get to finish in the back."

He watched her for a beat, as thought he did not quite believe how diplomatic this suggestion was. "I've never met a woman like you."

"Probably because there's only one woman like me, and it's _me_," she shot back, and jerked him down on to the bed, where he laid back and let her hastily roll on the condom. She threw a leg across him and hovered there, while he stroked her stomach, a little smile on his lips. She thought maybe when he said he enjoyed a lot of things, he meant he didn't hate this, either. She lowered herself on to him, and they both made a sound—this was different from before, more comfortable, too comfortable for her to feel disturbed by the intimacy. He pushed up into her and she ground against it with a hum.

"I mean it, you know," he said, conversational, as she rode him and he met each movement with a little thrust.

"Meant what?"

"That I've never… you can hate me all you want, but I like you."

Astrid's eyes fluttered closed. She didn't like the plain expression on his face—she never thought she'd miss that smirk, but the only thing worse than a smirk from this guy was a nicety. "You want me," she corrected.

"Yeah." He gave a particularly rough thrust, and Astrid grunted. "And I like you."

"This is doing nothing for me," she told him flatly, though it wasn't entirely true.

"You're fun."

"You barely know me."

He reached forward and started to toy with her clit, and she exhaled sharply. "Just a hunch I had. I had a hunch you would come to the bar if I asked you to have a drink, and—_ughh_—I had a hunch you'd sleep with me." She could feel herself getting close. The more he talked, his voice breathless and distracted and nasal, the closer she grew—what was that? "So I think I must have good hunches about you." He ran his free hand, the one that wasn't busy gliding slickly between them, up her side to run beneath her breath, and circle her nipple, earning him a whimper through her teeth. "What's that, Astrid, at a loss for words?" he asked, some smugness sneaking back in.

"I can talk." It came out hushed, but she had not forgotten their game.

"I think you like me too," he whispered, as she moved against him faster, harder, finally getting there.

"Shut up, shut up!"

"You do like me." He rolled her clit between his fingers and the nerves lit her up, and she came with a cry that sounded only pathetic to her red-tipped ears. The look on his face was so happy, so uncomplicated and convinced of some kind of mutual affection between them—two strangers in a dark hotel room! She fucked him harder for it, riding him through the special churning of her lower abdomen, trying to be violent but knowing he'd just believe she wanted him more. He'd stopped thrusting up, it was just her driving him into the mattress, groaning along with her own motions. She realized, climaxing, that he couldn't tell her such things—she was in charge, and she finished with authority, she hated him if she wanted, pinning his chest with her palms and digging in her nails until he mewled—not quite distressed, maybe surprised, maybe intrigued at the intersection of pleasure and pain.

Her movement against him slowed. When she took away her hands, she could see dark half-moons in the skin below his collarbone. Good. He had his head back, panting.

"Done," she said cheerfully, like she'd just checked something off her chore list.

Catching up, he glanced at her. "You're not."

"What?"

And he made a big adjustment—hoisting them both up and depositing her on her knees, face to face with the headboard. He didn't take a second before sliding back inside her, and she gasped at the familiar but slightly altered presence, and the unfortunate thrill of his weight against her ass. "There we go," she heard him mumble, and he started to move—yeah, she could hear more than she could see, and the noises he made were… he hadn't been lying about enjoying this. He reached around and worked her clit again, and with the new position hitting her just right, she would have her fourth orgasm tonight—shit. Had she ever actually had four orgasms in a night before? Fuck this guy.

"Fuck you." Just a little moan from Hiccup, no response. "I don't, I don't like you," she managed, as it happened, quicker than she'd thought, and she was twisting her fists into the quilt, pressing back against him. Four! "I hate you," she gasped—he had lost the coherence to touch her so she started touching herself, keeping herself going as he sped up.

He tried to say something, "_Ast_—" But he lost her name to finding release, which forced a better sound out of him, a reasonless animal sound, one of those surreal sex noises she'd never quite be able to scrub from her mind.

Hiccup pulled out, still whimpering and flailing a bit as he collapsed on to the bed beside her. She shrunk into a little heap. They laid there breathing heavily and letting the sweat dry on their skin. She could see steam rising off his chest. She hadn't realized how tired a person could be, after four orgasms. _Four_.

"We both lost," he observed.

Astrid threw him a glare. "I didn't lose. You lost."

"No, when you were on top—"

"No!"

"Yeah, yeah, you couldn't talk, you could only go harder." He said this with far too much enjoyment for her. She harrumphed.

"I'm _not_ blowing you."

"That's all right. I'm not eating you out."

"Then I guess we're both losers."

"Yeah, sure," he laughed. She felt herself blushing again—she didn't like how much he was enjoying just… being around her! "God," Hiccup said after a minute, "I don't think I ever ate dinner. I'm starving." He rolled toward the nightstand, flipped on the light—she squinting against the yellow glare—and he returned with a menu. "You want room service?" There was something hyper comical about a naked, sweaty man, still wearing a vile used condom, peering casually at a room service menu; Astrid snorted. "What?" he said, gaping at her with innocence she hadn't seen before.

"You're still wearing the condom."

"Oh." He glanced down. "Sorry?"

"It's just weird—I don't know, I thought it was funny."

He squinted at her, a lopsided smile lifting half his mouth, and tossed the menu at her before sitting up to slide off and tie the condom. When he got up to throw it away, he went to his bag and pulled on a t-shirt and fresh boxers. In the light she could see he had even more freckles than she'd thought. Aware of her own nudity more now that he was clothed, she crawled across the bed and toward the bathroom.

"I'm going to shower."

"Wait, what food do you want?"

She paused in the door to the bathroom. He asked the question so simply, as if it did not imply staying, as if it did not imply conversation and maybe flipping on the television and maybe sleeping over. As if it were as easy as a meal.

He must have sensed her dilemma, because he responded to her hesitation with a shrug. "You know, I'll do what I did before with drinks. I'll order food," he fell back on to the bed with the menu, "And if you want some, you can have it." _I had a hunch you would come to the bar if I asked you to have a drink… I think I must have good hunches about you._ Hiccup gave her a wide smile. Was he having a hunch right now? And more importantly, did she want him to be right? Would she _ever_ want him to be right?

"Sure. I'll think about it," she replied, and shut the bathroom door behind her.


	3. Chapter 3

He heard the shower turn off.

_Be cool, Haddock._

Scrambling, he sat up and tried to hastily swallow the generous forkful of salad in his mouth, except something went down the wrong pipe and started him coughing. So when the bathroom door clicked open, he was turned away from her, hacking up a lung.

"Sexy," came her high, derisive, smug voice. Great. She stood there in a white towel, wringing out her hair.

"I'm fine, thanks," he gasped, and cleared his throat. Her eyes fell to the bed: two trays lain out, his own already disheveled and hers still covered by the glinting metal cover. There was a bottle of white wine, too, which he'd already uncorked.

The spread didn't change her expression. "Fast room service."

"Maybe you were just in there a long time."

"I needed a good scrubbing." She came around to the end of the bed, and knelt to retrieve her bra and dress. She was going to leave, he realized.

A part of him argued, _You already banged her, it doesn't matter_, but he found himself unconvinced by that logic. Maybe he needed to have more rough sex with hot strangers in hotel rooms, and learn not to care. Ha, yeah. _That_. Like this was ever going to happen to him again, like it was an experience he'd earned, not one that had fallen into his lap because a beautiful (smart, funny, good-in-bed) woman had the misfortune to be lonely and he had the fortune to be there. Or maybe he needed to learn how to better distinguish romantic attraction from sexual—now it was all a hodgepodge of feeling, clouding his mind.

"I got you a cheeseburger." Her head jerked up. She rose slowly from the floor, he scratched his cheek. "Which is against, you know, everything I believe in, so I hope you at least take it to go."

Astrid, holding her clothes to her chest, looked at the tray, and then ripped off the metal cover. The sight of the burger made him a bit nauseous and he set aside his salad, hunger satiated. "What makes you think I eat meat?" she asked, her voice low and level, _too_ level. She was trying not to seem engaged. Funny how that gave him more hope than if she'd just been herself.

"Eh, you look like a meat eater," he said, giving her a wink. _You are disgusting_, said a voice that was the opposite of the one from earlier, the one telling him it didn't matter now that he'd banged her.

"Classy joke." And then, as if to exact her revenge, and intently holding his gaze, she dropped the towel. That left him sitting about two feet from her naked, damp body, aromatic and lovely in its cleanness, and she stood there for a second smirking before she stepped into her dress. He ought to punch himself in the crotch: he thought about stopping her; about dragging her back to the bed and knocking all the plates to the floor and going for a third round, because, why not? She might say she didn't like him and she might hurl names his way but he knew she wanted sex. It was the one thing he had on her. And he needed to have something on her, otherwise she'd go and he—he was sure he didn't want that.

Astrid zipped up her dress and plunked down on to the bed by her tray, sitting across from him. "A vegan with cancer, that's pretty ironic." Her eyes stayed on the food as, gingerly and much to his delight, she held the burger with both hands and took a massive bite.

"I think you'd be surprised how relentless cancer actually is." He meant this as a joke, but her face fell, she spluttered, covering her mouth.

"I'm sorry. That was insensitive—"

"Hey, relax, I'm not dying," he laughed, choosing not to add the asterisk, _but I could be_. He didn't see the need since they were both thinking it. "It _is_ ironic. I take very good care of myself. As you've seen, I'm athletic," he gestured to the bed, "I eat the same diet that's recommended for fifty year old men with heart problems. I do drink too much, though, so maybe that's it."

A little smile played at her mouth. "Being good in bed doesn't make you athletic."

"I took a year off college to hike the Appalachian Trail."

He always liked uttering this sentence, for the reactions—Astrid nearly dropped her burger in her clean lap, and he had the flicker of a thought that he ought to stick his face there before she spoke. "Are you serious? Isn't that like…" He gave her a curious grin and she went a little red. "It's intense?"

"Over two thousand miles, from Georgia to Maine."

"Shit." She took another bite of burger. She had almost downed the whole thing, actually, he was impressed and disappointed. "And you finished?"

"I did. I cried on the top of Mount Katahdin." It had been pouring rain, a deluge, the rangers recommended holding off on the last, challenging portion of the climb—and he'd gone anyway. "I always finish," he added, another innuendo, this one forcing a laugh out of her so that she nearly choked on the last of the burger and coughed, waving away his concerned movement toward her.

"See," he said, wagging a finger, "When it happens to you, I'm not going to make a joke, because I'm nice."

"Ha!" She took a deep breath, recovering. "Nice, nice is overrated."

"Then I'm not nice."

Astrid wiped her hands on a napkin, and he held his breath—if she was done eating, she might go, and—she gave him a small smile and gestured to the open bottle of wine on his tray. "You sharing?" Hiccup exhaled.

"Yeah. Of course." He hastily filled a glass and handed it to her, then replenished his own. She drained half the glass in three long gulps, but he only took a sip, instead tracing the rim with his finger. "You know," he said, beating down the nervous swell in his stomach, "I'm flying home tomorrow, but the firm I work for here, it's a pretty regular arrangement. I'm in town every couple of months."

Astrid paused in the midst of her drink. She lowered the wine from her lips, eyes unfocused on the wall behind him. He waited for her to speak, but nothing, so he shrugged and ran a hand through his hair.

"Maybe next time I'm here I can take you out to dinner—" Incredulity swarmed Astrid's face, and he had to quickly extend a hand between them. "No, I'm not asking you out, I just meant I'm going to go broke if I keep buying you twenty dollar hamburgers, and I'd like to have something more filling than a salad before I go burning calories like this."

She sat back, sucking her lip, looking wound up but indecisive. Trying to wrap her head around the implicit assumption of what he'd just said: you'll want me when you can have me and my business trips are going to get a lot more fun from here on out.

"Do I _like_ untoward confidence in a man?" she asked thoughtfully, glancing at the ceiling. As if she hadn't answered that question when she let him pin her against a wall, but whatever.

"Am I wrong?" Presently he knew the answer, but the lonely, bony fifteen-year-old Hiccup who still occasionally pouted in the back of his mind prayed hard for a no.

Astrid finished her glass of wine and got up from the bed. "What did you do with my underwear?"

"Uh… I shot it over there, somewhere."

With a little _hmph_, she retrieved the panties and stuffed them, along with her bra, into a clutch that he hadn't noticed before. Not speaking—well, fuck. He scooted quickly to the edge of the bed, catching her attention as she slipped on her heels.

"You should at least give me your last name. And your number." Smile, charming, smile. "You know, in case I'm pregnant."

She laughed. Score. He tried to keep his grin sexy and not… childish. "Kudos for finally making a decent joke," she told him, and went to the little desk in the corner. "Last name is Hofferson. Don't abuse this number." She handed him a scrap of paper—it didn't start with 555, good sign.

"Never. And you still have—"

"Your card, yeah." She started for the door, and he was about throw out a quick goodbye when she froze with her back to him, and swung back around, phone in hand—

"Did you just take a picture of me?"

"Yes," said Astrid stiffly, shoving the phone back in her purse. "It's for the cops."

"_Cops_—"

"That was a joke, funnyman." She smirked when she said, "You don't even know your own kind."

He fell back to the bed, clutching his chest, deep breath; he didn't quite understand what he'd been so afraid of. The invalidation of the past two hours. Not seeing her again. Something sappy and idealistic, like he tended to do. "Yeah, you're right." He heard a slam and sat up quickly. Astrid had gone. "Okay, bye," he said to the void where she'd stood, a little glad she couldn't hear the pathetic smallness of his voice.

* * *

><p>12:25 AM. Took her an extra hour to get home, with the night buses running. Astrid shoved her key into the lock, struggled with the oft-troublesome mechanism, and then drove the door open with her shoulder. Her apartment: dark and warm, smelling of vanilla. Ruff had been burning candles before she'd gone to bed—or not, since the light went on in the next room as Astrid bolted the door behind her.<p>

"What the hell?"

She winced. Her roommate stood in the arch that opened on to the living room, in her pajamas, visibly groggy. Astrid started for the kitchen but tripped over her own suitcase, lying open and obtrusive in the entrance hall. She'd torn it open to get her make-up bag the moment she arrived home, and… hadn't really bothered to drag it to her room.

"Sorry," she muttered, bending to shove the displaced clothing back into the bag.

"I came home and saw that and thought you'd been kidnapped or something."

"Nope, just in a hurry." As Astrid straightened up, she met Ruff's hard, knowing gaze, and her stomach dropped.

"You got laid."

"What?" said Astrid, eyes on the floor. Moving quickly under her culpability, she rolled her bag down the hall and kicked it into the open door of her bedroom.

"Please, you're wearing a bodycon dress that just barely covers the goods, and those are your fuck-me heels."

"Do you want some tea? I'm going to make some tea." Astrid marched into the kitchen and Ruff trailed after her, persistent.

"Was it Eret?"

"No," Astrid nearly shouted, flipping on the electric kettle. "It wasn't Eret, Christ!"

"Good, because I'm going to hit that." Ruff plopped down at the kitchen table, her feet propped up on one of the other chairs. "So who was it, then?"

"No one you know."

"Oh, no, you didn't do someone in your cohort, did you? That's gonna bite you later—"

"It's not really someone I know, either." Astrid turned and leaned back against the counter, waiting for the water to boil. Ruff looked surprised, interested, amused. The way Ruff got about other people's sex lives.

"No," she marveled, "You haven't banged a rando since college, so unless you ran into Cary Grant reincarnate and found him—" She did what might've been some '40s voice. "—_irrepressibly charming_, I don't believe it."

Astrid wanted to say she didn't believe it either, that she had made it up, fallen asleep in the baggage claim and everything had been some panicked fever dream. Hey, wouldn't it be hilarious if I fucked the rude guy from the security line approximately five hours after meeting him! Yeah, hilarious. The kettle boiled and she retrieved a mug and a teabag from the cabinet. "More of a Jimmy Stewart than a Cary Grant, actually."

"More of a…" Ruff scoffed, still disbelieving. "So what, your flight gets in at seven and you just decide it would be cool to go out to some bar and…"

Taking her time to reply, Astrid poured her tea and brought it to the table, settling across from Ruff. She took her roommate's love and sex advice with a grain of salt, typically, since they had very different philosophies about these areas, but a sounding board—someone to whom she could say everything, out loud—never felt like a bad idea. "I met him on the flight."

Ruff's eyes widened and, hand clamped across her mouth, collapsed into giggles. Astrid frowned at her across the table. "You—did you join the Mile High Club?"

"No! He was an asshole to me in security and didn't realize we were sitting together on the same flight, so he spent the whole time trying to get me not to hate him."

"Ooh, meet cute," said Ruff, enjoying this entirely too much.

"No, not that," said Astrid through clenched teeth.

"And then—?"

"He invited me to have a drink at his hotel, and…"

"He was hot? Did you—" She pursed her lips and drew her phone from her bag, pulling up the photo and sliding it across the table. Ruff chortled and assessed the image of an off-guard, half-dressed Hiccup. "You know me too well. Cute face, skinny arms. Is he funny?"

Astrid squinted at her. "How did you—"

"Dunno, he just looks like he'd be funny. And I know your type."

She lowered her forehead to the table. "God. Help."

"That bad, huh?"

Though death might have been less humiliating, Astrid peeked around her mug, up at her roommate. "I think it was the best sex I've ever had."

Ruff appeared appropriately disappointed on her behalf. "Oh. Wow. Do I get specifics?"

"I came four times."

Ruff nodded, raised her shoulders. "Okay. I believe it."

"I'm twenty-four years old. Are all the men I've slept with up until now incompetent? What the fuck _is _that?"

"Maybe it's the whole anonymous, hotel room thing?" Ruff offered, shrugging. "Like, sometimes a one-off with a stranger seems better than all the pretty decent relationship sex you've had, but really, it's just because it's a one-off with a stranger, that's part of the allure." Ruff tapped herself between the eyes. "Psychology, kid."

"Yeah, maybe," Astrid mumbled. That was a nice thing to believe—perhaps she could convince herself of it, with a little work.

"Anyway, he lives like six hundred miles away, what are you going to do?" Ruff got to her feet. "Bummer, but at least you got laid. I'm going to bed. Early shift tomorrow."

Sighing, Astrid tapped her mug. "I'm going to finish my tea."

"See you, then. Don't think too hard about the quadruple."

Ruff patted her shoulder on the way out, and Astrid let out a single, dry laugh. "Sure."

Sitting alone, now, she pulled out her wallet and retrieved the business card he'd given her, a year ago, or so it felt. She stared at it for a long second, reexamining, like the information might have changed. _Holden Haddock. Graphic Designer._ The phone number in one corner and the email in another. Seized by a decision, she got up, stomped over to the kitchen trashcan, and popped up the lid, holding the card above it, an execution. Her heart rate had sped up, her breath gone ragged, she stared down at the card in villainous fury. Holden Haddock! Graphic Designer! Bullshit. Bullshit, Hiccup. Hiccup… Damn. With a frustrated groan, Astrid folded the card in half and shoved it back in her wallet, and went to bed, dumping out her tea in the sink.


	4. Chapter 4

**This doesn't have Christmas stuff, but it DOES have sexting. So some light semi-smut. Thumbs up! Ironically right after I finished it I spilled alcohol all over my phone.**

* * *

><p>"The good news, Fish, is that I think you're the youngest divorced guy here."<p>

Hiccup's friend glanced hastily around the bar; he drummed his fingers on the table, nervous. "There are other divorced guys here? Why's that good?"

"Yeah, there are. College bar, everyone's skeevy." Chin on his fist, Hiccup followed Fish's gaze, scanning the crowd a second time. Lots of over-30 guys in slick silk shirts tucked into their straight-legged slacks, huge watches weighing down their wrists. Fewer young women, clumped together defensively with cosmopolitans, avoiding the leers of the men, some old enough to be their fathers, all secure enough to be their sugar daddys. "We're the only guys in here who are their kind," Hiccup observed, trying to ignore the fact that Fish hadn't changed after work and looked better prepared to do someone's taxes than pick up a woman.

"Their kind," Fish repeated. He watched a petite brunette woman walk by the table and flinched, and Hiccup stifled a laugh.

"When you're over thirty in a college bar and you're not divorced, you might as well be." He wasn't sure when he'd become the sexually confident friend, the guru, but the responsibility truly burdened him when it came to Fish, who was not a willing pupil.

"I'm under thirty and divorced," said Fish, not getting it. Hiccup drained his scotch and waved to the waitress, who gave him a nod.

"You want another drink? I want another drink."

"This is pointless," Fish announced, "I give up. That's it."

"Relax, I'm your wingman tonight. It'll be fine."

"Wingman?" Confusion drew Fish from his distress. "Last time we were out you said you were desperate, that's why you kept striking out, because—"

"Desperate reads sad. I know, Fish. Don't use my own mantras against me." The waitress arrived and set a gloriously full glass before him, and he took a long drink before replying, hoping to put off the inevitable. "I hit a home run when I was out of town last weekend, I'm good."

Fish's elbows slid across the table as he slumped over, eyes wide. "You were gone one night. You're literally a savant."

Hiccup snorted, without any genuine amusement. "I got lucky. Like, very lucky." Like a yearlong-supply-for-the-wank-bank kind of lucky. He resisted the urge to check his phone, see if he'd heard from her. A text. He would've taken an email.

Fish did not seem consoled. "This is really it. I had my chance at a happy ending and I blew it. I'm going to be alone forever."

"Hey, hey," cautioned Hiccup, wagging a finger at his friend. "Remember back in school, when I told you that if I could engaged, you could get engaged, and then—"

"We got engaged within a week of each other?"

"Exactly!"

"But neither of those relationships lasted. You and Heather never set a date."

Hiccup waved off this pesky technicality. "That's a very negative view to take."

"But you still work together, you complain about it constantly—"

"Okay," said Hiccup, exhaling impatiently. "Missing the point, you're not looking for the fireworks right now—if I can have an incredible hook-up, so can you. Though maybe tonight's not the night," he concluded, with a dismal look at the increasingly thin crowd.

"I knew it," Fish groaned, "And I don't know. Fireworks would be nice too." Hiccup made a small noise, unsure how to confront _fireworks_ as a concept—by what yardstick did one measure instantaneous connection? "Was it really an incredible hook-up?" his friend asked sadly.

God. Hiccup had hoped to avoid discussing it—he'd hoped to avoid telling anyone it had happened at all, actually, until Fish forced his hand. He didn't want to hear the blowback, the concerns about sexually transmitted disease, the shocking anonymity of the hotel room, the judgmental stares when he admitted he couldn't stop thinking about it, the reality that the highlight reel played during his office daydreams and he kept having to read the business section of the Times to get rid of half-erections. Was it an incredible hook-up? He would contest both those descriptors, thought they were his own. Incredible? Try mindblowing. Hook-up? Try religious conversion. The Apostle Hiccup. He only said, "It was good sex, yeah."

"How many girls have you had sex with?"

"Fish!"

"I know Heather was first, but that ended three years ago, so her and the girl from last week, and the gymnast, and the biter, the girl who's the reason we can't go back to that one bar—" Hiccup began to down his scotch in long gulps. "—and the one who had that beautiful red hair, didn't she run over your phone with her car? Oh, and who gave you that scar on your chin?"

"That was Heather." Throwing down his emptied glass, Hiccup ran a hand over his face. "I share too much with you, Fish."

"I don't mind. I live vicariously through your diverse experiences, I always have." Back when Fish and Cam had still been together, Fish's now-ex, then wife had oft lamented the number of mornings she'd come downstairs to find her husband's best friend waking up on their couch, ready to give one hell of a story in exchange for an egg-free muffin and a cup of coffee.

"Numbers aren't important," Hiccup decided loudly.

"They're important when the number is one," came his friend's voice, smaller than before, and guilt slammed Hiccup. He forgot the added difficulty of Fish's predicament, coming out of a first marriage that was also a first love, a first relationship.

"You'll get there," he attempted, with a perfunctory shoulder pat. "Here's a good tip—you're twenty-six, they're women, not girls." _Like you're the expert_, he grumbled to himself, uncertain when his sense of adventure had turned to a proclivity for brief, tantric relationships with beautiful, unstable women. Or if not unstable, hundreds of miles away.

"Women." Fish examined the last sip of beer in his glass, and then took it. "All right. Women. I want to go home now." He glanced at Hiccup. "Call of Duty?"

"Actually," Hiccup replied, with an eye to his watch, "It's only eight, I think I'll go back into the office for a couple of hours."

"Seriously? It's Friday."

"I'm feeling productive," he lied, not wanting to say that he needed the distraction, and to be alone, but the dark silence of his apartment—aside from the sleeping purrs of one elusive black cat—oppressed him, and the air conditioning was out. After another hour, or another drink, with Fish, he might end up spilling some information he didn't yet want to share. Those war games were bloody, what if someone's leg went flying off and he had to vomit? No escaping an explanation. Guiding his friend toward the door, he gave Fish a peerlessly bright grin. "You go on. I'll get the tab."

* * *

><p>Astrid took a deep breath, and another, and closed her eyes. It was quiet, finally quiet.<p>

Until another snore ripped through the silence of her bedroom, and she screamed silently in frustration, punching at the air around the naked masculine body sleeping beside her. Lame sex, and now he was keeping her awake, so she had to wallow in still being half-horny after a truly insipid orgasm.

_Sure, I'll go out with your personal trainer, Ruff_, she'd said. _Sure, we can get meatball subs,_ she'd said. _Sure, you can stay over, even though you laughed when I told you what my doctorate will be in_, she'd said. The lengths she'd gone to proving that she could have normal, extremely satisfying sexual relationships with men who lived in her very town. The lengths she'd gone to proving that last week hadn't really been anything special, that she had no problem moving on, that she didn't need to chase that amazing moment in her sex life because her sex life was already full of amazing moments! Chock full! Bursting to full!

Except it wasn't. Her sex life was this beefy guy, grunting on top of her for five minutes and falling asleep twenty seconds later, and the soon-to-be-bimonthly quadruple.

She hated that she'd already decided it would happen again, that quadruple. But she certainly had decided.

"Fuck," she muttered, and then grabbed her phone from the bedside table. She'd input his contact info a few days ago, while lying in this very same bed, phone in one hand and vibrator in the other. Astrid was having a tough week.

She wrote him a text.

(10:23) _When are you coming into town again?_

Hiccup was himself about three minutes from unconsciousness, cheek against the edge of his desk, blinking at the harsh light of the two massive computer monitors at his workspace, one swallowed by the grey backdrop of Photoshop, another showing the dull, businessy contents of his inbox. Sleep-worthy. He'd gotten nothing done, had pulled out the special work scotch he kept in his desk drawer, and that wasn't keeping him awake. So another night drinking himself to sleep in his office after everyone else had already gone home. Or, he thought everyone had gone home. He worked in a space with several other designers and artists, all of whom did ample freelance in addition to the clients they got through the company, so you never really knew when they'd be coming and going.

His phone buzzed against the desk, making him jump, and a second later his computer played the alert for a new text. Rubbing his eyes, he set the phone to silent and pulled up the messaging app on the desktop—and promptly slammed his knee on the bottom of the desk at Astrid's text. When was he—

"Don't panic," he told his empty, dark office, and drew a couple of breaths to steady himself before raising his hands to the keyboard.

(10:25) Why would you want to know that?

(10:25) _Don't get excited. I just forgot how shockingly incompetent your gender is_

(10:25) So I'm competent? That's nice of you to say

(10:26) _You have one skill. I wouldn't want to disparage you._

(10:26) What brought on your revelation?

Astrid whimpered to herself, and glared sideways at the male heap currently taking up far too much space in her bed. He was hairy, too, she hated hairy. Ruff knew that—what kind of terrible forgetfulness had led her to set up this date?

But at least it gave her the means to convince Hiccup that this was, strictly, purely about sex. She'd had bad sex, and it made her miss good sex. Flawless logic.

(10:27) _I let a guy fuck me tonight. He looks like a roll of cookie dough someone dropped in a bunch of hair, and fucks like you would expect_

Hiccup did a full spit take, and had to mop scotch off the monitor.

(10:27) Vivid

(10:27) I'm back on the 16th of next month.

(10:28) Did you ditch doughboy?

(10:28) _No, he's still here and he snores_

(10:28) Are you texting me while the guy you just fucked is sleeping?

Astrid froze, staring at the light of her phone against the dark of her pillow. She'd shifted to lie on her belly. So preoccupied was she with her annoyance at the snorer, she hadn't realized how this might look to Hiccup. Shit. _Just lie_, she pleaded, but her fingers wouldn't spell out a no—probably because she was still randy and liked the idea of turning Hiccup on, even if it meant compromising her dignity. Or revealing that it had been compromised: in truth, her dignity took the critical hit when she'd decided to text him in the first place.

(10:29) _Maybe_

(10:29) Are you in bed?

He poured another drink. Steeling himself, ready to be shot down, but he would try. He always tried.

(10:30) _Yes_

(10:30) Are you naked?

(10:30) Are you horny?

She was going to kill this guy, one day, for being right.

(10:30) _This is very gauche of you_

(10:31) That's me, Mr. Gauche

(10:31) I've been thinking about you a lot

(10:31) Do you remember the prize for our bet?

_Nope_, Astrid thought strongly; she hit the lock button on her phone and set it aside. She was better than this. Sexting a near-perfect stranger while literally in bed with a guy who was very much flesh and blood, who she could see and talk to whenever she wanted. Who probably wouldn't consider going down on her, let alone send her suggestive texts about it.

On the nightstand, the phone lit up. Another message. She grit her teeth and, weak, grabbed it to look.

(10:32) I changed my mind about it. I think that would be a great place to start when I see you again

The image of it flicked into her head and she felt a new wetness starting up between her legs, and she shot off a quick, infuriated text.

(10:32) _Fuck you_

(10:32) Wouldn't you like to

(10:32) _I'm lying right next to the guy I just slept with and you're trying to get me off_

(10:32) That's why I'm competent, remember

(10:33) _And a terrible person_

(10:33) Sure, but you're the one who texted me. From bed with him. To ask when I would be back in town so you could fuck me. Did I really get the wrong message?

Chewing his lip, Hiccup wrapped a tight hand around his belt buckle, but refused to undo it. Didn't want to jinx himself. He was very pleased not to have agreed to Call of Duty.

(10:34) _This is screwed up_

(10:34) Isn't that part of what you like about me?

"Yes," she sobbed quietly, and put her head in her pillow for a second before replying. She'd done this with her college boyfriend a couple times, except it had involved describing things she'd do to his dick while in reality she watched _Real Housewives_ and ate chips and blatantly lied when asked if she was touching herself.

(10:34) _Fine_

(10:34) _We're going to hell_

Hiccup let out a loud cackle and slapped the desk. Brilliant, amazing.

(10:35) As long as the devil doesn't stop me from giving head

(10:35) _You're awful_

(10:35) _The devil probably loves it when people give head_

(10:35) There's a bar in town where they called me 'the swimmer' because of how long I can hold my breath

(10:35) _Worst line I've ever heard_

Smiling, he leaned back into his chair, shutting his eyes and going to work on undoing his fly. He'd been well on his way to hard since she confessed to lying naked next to a sleeping man and wanting _him_ instead—powerful stuff. With his jeans undone, the pressure was off his crotch, and, his facilities a little hazy from the arousal and the alcohol, he sent off another message.

(10:36) I want you so much

Astrid stared at these words too long. They hit her somewhere funny, they didn't fit with his smug act, they were too candid. He'd said he liked her, but that was during sex, too. If this even counted as sex, when they hadn't start yet. She rolled on to her back and let her legs fall open, inhaling deeply.

(10:36) _I thought you were going to tell me what you want to do me_

(10:37) To lick you until you're so wet it drips off my chin

She dropped the phone on to her face and gasped in surprise—the snorer stirred, she froze. He snorted once, and silence, and finally another snore. Astrid took another deep breath. When she checked, there was a second text from him.

(10:38) What do you think?

(10:38) _I think between my legs is about the only place I'd ever enjoy seeing your face_

(10:38) Knew you liked being bent over

(10:38) _I also like how you can't talk when you're using your mouth_

(10:38) You'd be surprised

(10:38) Want to go for five next time?

Seconds passed and there was nothing from her. He imagined the little gasps she might make, sliding her fingers in and out of herself, trying not to wake the sleeping idiot beside her. With a tiny groan, he finally pulled his dick out of his boxers, and the overhead light went on in the office.

"Are you _masturbating_?"

"_Fucking shit_," he said at the top of his lungs, trying to tuck himself away while he swung around in his chair, back was to the door. "Get the fuck out of my office, Heather!"

"And here I thought the days of me walking in on you jerking off were over."

"What the hell are you doing here?" When he turned back around, she was leaning on the doorjamb, smirking. She had a mint between her teeth like always. He hated those fucking mints, he had to look away when he saw them in the drug store.

"Same thing as you, but less disgusting."

"What, wallowing in self-pity? You're good at that."

She snorted. "Rude, I was coming in here because I saw the light from your computer and thought you'd forgotten to turn it off again. I was doing you a favor."

"Sure you didn't want to look through my files for another idea to steal?" The grin melted from Heather's face.

"Seriously, masturbating in the workplace is a new level of depravity, and I have seen _real_ depravity from you." He fought the urge to throw his pencil cup at her, instead taking another drink, which drew her eye.

"And you've been hitting the scotch again, perfect."

"Oh, fuck you, I know you keep a bong in your desk."

"That's different. I'm an artist, it's for my creative process."

"And scotch is for—"

"You're not an artist," said Heather, her voice too low to be smug—mean, she sounded mean. "Stop touching yourself at work, you meet clients here. Night, _Holden_." And she vanished from the doorway, leaving the light on.

"Bitch," he muttered, face in his hands. What an astonishing bonerkiller she was. He heard the front door shut—she'd left. Seized by anger, unsure how he'd come to be as drunk as he felt, he grabbed the bottle of scotch and marched out of his office and across the open floor, with its elegant mod cubicles and huge printers, fished the master key from the receptionist's desk, and used it to open the door to Heather's office.

Somehow unable to smile, he poured out the liquor into her keyboard, and then across the thin glass surface of her desk, where it ran off the edges and on to the carpet. And, as if to explain, he grabbed a scotch-soaked pad of paper, wrote _I have cancer –H_, and stuck it to the top of her monitor.

When he returned to his own office, he had to sit for a moment, catching his breath. It took everything he had to force his eyes back to the computer screen.

(10:38) _Yes_

(10:49) _Well, I finished without you_

Fuck. Fuck, fuck.

(10:51) Good

(10:51) I'm sorry

(10:51) I have a confession

(10:51) I'm at work right now

(10:51) _What?_

(10:51) Not working. Just at the office. My coworker just walked in on me

(10:51) _Oh my god_

(10:51) I have another confession, which is that my coworker is also my ex-fiancée

(10:52) I have a lot of baggage

(10:52) _Yeah, I kind of got that with the whole cancer thing_

He laughed, startling himself, and wiped his eyes on the back of his sleeve. Crying like a little boy, his dad used to shout at him for that. What was he going to do with a one-legged son who couldn't even pretend to enjoy playing tackle football at Thanksgiving?

(10:52) Hey, can I give you a call?

Astrid was sitting on the toilet in the brightness of her bathroom, wearing a robe, having run from the bedroom to clean herself up and not really wanted to go back. She'd spent the past ten minutes assuming he was too caught up in his own fantasizing to help her out, which didn't surprise but disappointed nonetheless. And she'd been fine enough, imagining him down there, taking his precious time.

Then she got this text.

A call.

(10:52) _Is everything okay_?

(10:52) Sort of. I just want to talk to someone

She knew what she ought to do, of course. She knew the answer was _no_, _because you're too far from me and I can't help you_. The smart thing to do, stop it before it starts. And Astrid, she was a smart young woman.

Unfortunately, she was also not heartless, and this guy—cancer guy—appealed to that soft part of her, and not to her brain, where she might have had the strength to turn him down. He couldn't have had anyone else, if he was asking _her_, of all people. "Shit," she mumbled, pulling her robe tighter around herself.

(10:53) _Yeah, give me a call_


	5. Chapter 5

"So yeah, the book comes out, it's a huge success, and I don't get a penny. Not even a dedication. And it was all my idea."

"That's bullshit, why didn't you sue her?" asked Astrid, switching the phone to her shoulder. She poured another glass of wine, and lay back on the sofa in the dark stillness of her living room.

"Because lawyers cost money, and she'd plagiarized my best idea so I didn't have any." She switched the phone back to her hand and caught sight of the timestamp on their call—thirty-nine minutes and forty-nine seconds, and counting. Whatever. He went on, "And you know, a few weeks earlier I'd found her snooping through some of my designs and thought it was nothing. But it was… So that's the story of how my fiancée became my ex, and also the torment of my life."

"How are you still working with this woman, again?"

"Another thing I could not afford was quitting. No severance." On the other end of the line, she heard a series of clicks and a thud. Twenty minutes ago he'd said he was going home, and she'd talked to him through the bus ride. "I did pour half a bottle of Scotch all over her desk tonight, though. You'd have been proud."

"Sounds like it."

"God, my apartment is like a furnace."

"Are you home now?"

"Yeah, and the air conditioning is still broken. I hate summer."

"I love summer," Astrid laughed, curling her knees toward herself. "I don't have to waste time piling on a bunch of clothes every morning. Feels freer." She was—calm, in an eerie way. Different from how she usually felt talking to this guy. No irritation, no lust. Maybe it was because when he'd first called her he'd been a fucking wreck, and she'd had to be levelheaded in order to bring him back down to earth, and she hadn't shaken the Zen feeling. She was hearing his voice—_really_ hearing it—for the first time; before it had been this scratchy blur attached to a handsome face and a lithe body. Without those things to distract, he sounded nasal, and geeky, maybe a bit cartoonish.

"Well, I can't say I mind you with less clothes on." But he still said stuff like that.

"You know, I'd tell you that you have bad taste in women, but you really like me, so clearly you've got something right."

He chuckled, a stupid, high, airy giggle, she covered her mouth at the sound of it. "It's true, though, my taste in women is awful. I don't think I ever figured out the difference between how it feels to want someone sexually and to want them romantically—so I end up being with women I want to sleep with but don't actually like, and you can imagine how well that goes over."

"Oof," she muttered sympathetically, not thinking where she might fit into this pattern. "I bet it's not pretty."

"I don't think it helps that I like mean, either."

"You like mean," Astrid echoed, grinning to herself. On his end she heard what might've been a refrigerator door closing.

"Mm, yeah. Not like, cruel. Just a little rough around the edges."

"So how are you going to know when you meet some mean, sexy lady you want but also like?" _Why did you ask that?_ demanded a voice in the back of her mind. And she said it so playfully, too, like a joke! As if to confirm how stupid this question had been, Hiccup fell silent on the other side of the line. Fucking shit, she drained the rest of her wine glass and spoke again, shrill and chipper: "You sound different on the phone, you know."

He waited a beat before speaking, maybe reckoning whether or not it was worth badgering her about the mean, sexy lady thing. He must've decided no, and she exhaled when he spoke. "Different how?"

"Like less of a douche."

"Oh, wow. I'm honored."

"Seriously. I think it's your voice. I don't think I could be offended by that voice, it's too weird and funny." She poured herself another glass of wine; she had gone through almost half the bottle already.

"Oh? You don't think I could offend you right now?"

"You want to try?"

"I really wish I'd gotten to finish earlier." She grinned, because she'd had hers and knew the dirty talk wouldn't work on her this time, and she liked not falling prey to his careful little sex traps, for once.

"Go fish."

He groaned. "All right, fine, I'll wait until we hang up."

"Yeah." Astrid glanced at the clock on their mantle—it was getting late. She had work early tomorrow and felt that particular frustration of knowing she ought to sleep while simultaneously realizing she would fail if she tried.

He must've been thinking about the morning, too. "I'm going to my fifth oncologist tomorrow."

"Fifth?"

"My fifth consult. I keep hoping one of them will say the chemo is worth a shot," he said, too lightly. She supposed talking about the cancer this way was some kind of coping mechanism, but it made her squirm.

"Right," she said, for lack of another reply.

"I have another confession for you, Astrid." _Oh no._

"Maybe you should consider talking to a priest."

"I'd have to find a very open-minded priest to replace you," he joked, another one of those punch lines to veil the heaviness in his tone. "You're the only one I've told."

"The only one you've told?" She drew an X in the condensation on her wine glass. From the hall, down toward Ruff's room, came the sound of a door creaking open, and her head snapped up.

"About the cancer." Her heart lurched into her throat as her roommate's footsteps squeaked the floorboards in the hall, and Astrid huddled into the couch, hoping Ruff wouldn't look into the living room. "My parents don't know. My friends don't know." The light flipped on in the bath, flooding the hall with yellow, and then the door closed. "I guess I left Heather a note about it but, she's not important anymore." Astrid focused on her breathing, not sure why she was so afraid of being found in this moment, but shaking anyway. "So yeah… it's just you."

The bath opened again, more yellow, until Ruff flipped off the light and padded back toward her room.

"Astrid?"

"Yeah."

There was a pause in her roommate's footsteps, halfway down the hall.

"Is that weird?" asked Hiccup. "I mean, I know it is, but I didn't want you to feel…"

Finally, the footsteps resumed and the door to Ruff's room click closed. Astrid inhaled noisily. Her hands trembled, sloshing her wine. "It's fine." It wasn't fine, of course: it was fucked up. _He _was fucked up.

He spoke the same way he had on the plane when they'd first met, and he wanted so desperately for her not to block him out. "When I told you, I'd just found out, and I needed to tell someone who wasn't going to look at me and think, 'Everything's different now,' does that makes sense?"

Some acceptable replies would've been: _I don't care, that doesn't make it okay, I'm not your confidante, you can use me sexually but you don't dare use me emotionally_. But maybe that was hypocritical of her; after all, when she said she was lonely and then took him to bed, wasn't that equivalent to what he'd done? Used for sex, used for feeling, they were the same thing, really. She swallowed her anger, knowing it was unjustified—she just didn't like how he crawled closer to her at every turn. "You're trouble," she muttered into the phone, unthinking.

"I'm what?"

"Nothing. It makes sense, what you were saying. I don't care. Talk to me about it if you want, I guess, I'll be your… neutral stranger, or whatever." She went about downing the rest of her drink in a few gulps, having had enough now that sleep might come easier.

"Yeah, thanks," came his voice, unsteadily.

"I need to go to bed. You need to jerk off."

He laughed again, that weird high sound. "You're not wrong." Astrid set aside her empty and knocked the bottle, and had to hustle to keep it from falling over. "So when are you going to divulge your deepest, darkest secrets to me, Astrid?"

"Never." A reflexive response, but not necessarily a truthful one. "I don't need a neutral stranger."

All the humor had gone from his tone. "That's not been my experience with you, though." At least he didn't sound fucking smug, but this patronizing you-know-you-need me act wasn't much better. She wanted to punch through the phone.

"Whatever helps you get off," she shot back.

A pause. "Can I text you in the next couple of weeks? Before I come into town."

"You can try." It was a good thing he liked mean—or maybe it was a bad thing? She didn't even know anymore with this guy.

"Cool. I will."

"I'm hanging up, now."

"Thanks for talking to me, Astrid."

"You're welcome," she said, and hit _call end_.

* * *

><p>Astrid was not, generally speaking, a sharer.<p>

But not long after their late-night phone call, the dreams started, and she didn't think she could hold it in much longer.

At first they were innocent enough, these dreams, because they were entirely sexual in nature: she'd dream she and Hiccup were together, usually in her very own bed, and she'd wake up and reach for her vibrator and get on with her day. Sometimes their sex was so non-specific—she understood the tactile passage of heat and sweat and sound, but didn't think of him being inside her—that she came out of it feeling more sensually satisfied than turned on, like the intimacy trumped the fucking, and she didn't even need to get off. It was fine, because she knew Hiccup probably masturbated and thought of her daily. As long as she was no worse than him, she felt securely guilt-free.

And then about a week and a half later, she dreamed they sat on a bench in a tiny park, looking down at the city. She had walked through that park on her trip, maybe, or seen it in a film. It was familiar. They were drinking coffee; she thought they might've been on a date.

"I wish you were in the Bay Area," he said.

"Why?" she'd asked, because in the dream, she didn't know.

"Because I'm in love with you."

And she woke with a start, kicking the sheets off the end of her bed.

The next evening, she sat with Hiccup in the hotel bar, sipping a drink. He was wearing that same cardigan he'd worn the night they slept together, the cardigan she hated so much. He kept a hand draped over her arm.

She told him gently, "I had this dream where you said you were in love with me."

"Oh yeah?" he replied, blank-faced.

"It was terrifying."

Her fear didn't faze him. He raised his glass to his lips. "What's so scary about that?"

"I think I'd love you back."

Astrid didn't wake suddenly, this time. She stirred and stared at the dark ceiling of her bedroom, reminding herself over and over that she didn't _know_ him. She had nothing of which to feel frightened, because you couldn't love someone if you only spent a night or two with them, every couple of months. That was not how love worked. It would have been an illusion, if either of them felt it.

She had the dream in the bar again, just the same: _Oh yeah? – It was terrifying – What's so scary about that? – I think I'd love you back_. Except she didn't wake up, they kept talking.

Hiccup smirked. "You'd love me, huh?"

"Only if you loved me." She was a bad liar and he could see it, his eyes glinted.

"I'm not in love with you. I like that you let me fuck you and you listen to my problems. I save on hookers and therapists." Her dream characterization of Hiccup probably wasn't fair, he'd never been that outrageously mean, but she wondered of what he might be capable.

"You're horrible."

He shrugged and tipped his drink to her. "You're the one that fell in love with the douchebag from the security line."

This line played in her head at work the next morning, where she stared at the calendar pinned to the wall above the counter. Today was the 10th: Hiccup would be here in six days. He'd texted her a few times. One she'd ignored, another starting a flirty little conversation that went on throughout that day, and ended when she told him goodnight. He hadn't made a single innuendo during the whole thing, and oddly enough that disappointed her.

"What's the matter with you?"

Astrid jumped, and swung to face her roommate—and also, relatedly, her coworker. Ruff and she had met when Astrid moved to the city for college, and got the diner job to ease the financial burden not assuaged by her scholarship. When she'd graduated, it had happened that Ruff needed a place to live, too. Now they got to share a bathroom, and the daily humiliation caused by their work uniforms, very retro pink A-line dresses with frilly white aprons. Ruff was currently wiping ketchup on hers.

Astrid gave her a frown and hopped on one of the stools at the counter. They only had four tables in, and one who hadn't gotten their food yet, and the lunch rush wouldn't start for another hour. "I'm not sure what's the matter, actually."

"Hmph. I was really expecting you to say 'no' and flip me off." Ruff went behind the counter and poured herself a cup of coffee. "Do you have _any_ idea?"

"Well. Yeah. Do you remember—"

"The quadruple?"

Astrid squinted at her and Ruff gave a shrug, stirring her mug.

"You twirl your hair when you're thinking about sex."

She looked down at her arm propped against the counter, and sure enough, there was a tendril of hair wrapped around her index finger. "How the fuck—"

"I'm stunningly observant," Ruff declared, waving a dismissive hand her way. "I thought that was all a no-go because of the 600-miles-away thing."

"I mean. It's a no-go." Because it had to be a no-go. "But there are other ways it… might be a go." Astrid heaved a huge sigh and put her head in her hands, peeking at Ruff with one eye open. "He's coming back to town in six days."

To her initial relief and mounting terror, Ruff did not respond to this information right away. She took a sip of coffee, lowered her cup. "And you know this how?"

Astrid licked her lips, hesitating. "Because I've been texting him." Her roommate winced. "And there was a phone call."

"How long of a phone call?"

"An hour?"

Ruff tutted. "Trouble."

"Such trouble, he's the human personification of trouble," she groaned. "I've started having these dreams."

"Oh no," said Ruff immediately, glancing over at their customers. "Like, wet dreams?"

"Yeah, at first, and I didn't even mind them, but now—" She leaned across the counter, confidential. "I had a dream where he said he was in love with me."

It shocked her in the moment but after a second's consideration, she wasn't surprised: Ruff burst out laughing. "Holy shit!" she gasped, "That's insane. You barely know the guy, you slept with him and didn't even stay over—you talked to him on the phone for an _hour_."

"You don't get it," Astrid muttered, staring at her palms.

"I get that you have a crush on him. Because he's cute and charming and good in bed." She stuck her head down so Astrid would be forced to meet her eye. "Love has nothing to do with anything. How old are you, for real?"

"He told me he has cancer."

Ruff froze. The truth came barreling out of Astrid.

"He told me before we slept together, and then a week later he admits that I'm the only one who know—not his parents, not his friends, just me." She sat up, breathing deeply, and folded her hands in her lap. "I'm not the one over… overestimating what's going on between us. He did that. I'm just worried about the consequences."

After a long pause, Ruff asked quietly, "Is he dying?"

"No. They're amputating his leg, it's bone cancer. It's really rare but it can happen. I looked it up," she confessed.

"Jesus Christ," Ruff muttered. They sat there quietly for a minute. Astrid thought of Hiccup in a hospital bed, stuck up with IVs and latched to an EKG. How frightened he would be and how he would never admit it—probably, anyway. She didn't know him that well. "So what happens?" said Ruff, breaking into her daydream. "He falls in love with you because you're his… cancer goddess, or something. It's not like that's any realer than your crush."

"I guess." She decided not to fight her roommate on the crush topic—she was right, Astrid did have a crush on him. She'd admit that. It made her feel slightly less upset about the dreams when she could claim, _it's just a crush_.

"Do you think he'd ever come here and try to propose to you or something?"

"No," she snorted. As easily as the image of Hiccup in the hospital bed had materialized, the image of him down on one knee evaded her. He didn't strike her as much of a romantic. If he made any gushing proclamation of love, he'd likely follow it up by slapping her ass. What did she like about him, again?

"Then there's nothing to worry about."

She shrugged and dragged a nail across the countertop.

"Unless there is." Astrid glanced up at Ruff, her lips pursed, and was met with a furrowed brow. "Because you do like him. And you're worried about what might happen if he likes you too, even if he's just projecting a ton of cancer emotions on to you."

Searching for something to be pleased about, Astrid forced a smile. "Do you have some degree in psychology I don't know about?"

Quirking an eyebrow, Ruff grabbed a carafe to go give the customers their refills. "Nope, but I do pour coffee in a diner, which is the practical version of that."

"Yeah." Her friend went away and a couple came in through the front entrance, prompting Astrid to stand. Reaching for menus, she gave them a wide smile. "Hi, welcome to Mimi's. Breakfast or lunch?"


	6. Chapter 6

**In case you were hoping to spend New Year's with some very intense Hiccstrid smut, I've got you covered.**

* * *

><p>(3:10) Text me your address? I'm about to get a cab<p>

(3:11) _What, don't you have a hotel?_

(3:11) I want you in your bed

Hiccup looked at the message in its little bubble, ran his thumb over the screen, and locked his phone and shoved it in his back pocket. Definitely not the worst thing he'd said to her. Through the glass front of the airport the sun flooded the baggage claim; it would be sweltering outside, he could see the heat waves on the asphalt. The blazer and jeans he'd donned this morning would do him no favors, but he went out to the curb and met the wall of warmth with a grimace. The taxi line stretched along the sidewalk. He'd be here for a while, so he had ample time to stand around sweating and hoping the come-on swayed her.

He wanted to see her apartment. He wanted her in that bed, too, for various reasons, but he really wanted to see her apartment. He didn't know why. It might prove her realness to him, after she had been a phone number and some letters and a voice for so long. If she balked at the idea of fucking him in her bed at three o'clock in the afternoon on a weekday—though she'd said she wasn't busy—he would just have to pout and hope she had a change of heart for his next trip. Which would also be his last trip with two legs. Not that he'd thought about it.

Nor had he thought about the pressing matter of telling his parents, and his friends, or even about the meeting he had at eight o'clock tomorrow morning to present nine months of work to a bunch of executives—he was living in the moment, caring only about now, and all the hot wet filth he would get up to tonight. Being with Astrid trumped everything. Maybe that made her a distraction, or a blissful reprieve, but did that make sense? She was the only person who knew about the cancer, excluding Heather, who had yet to mention his antics, and she was certainly the only one he talked to about it. If he meant her to shield him from the injustices of his own life, he hadn't done much of a job helping her to that task.

So not a distraction, not a reprieve. Just a friend, and their time together was… something good, keeping him afloat in a sea of bad. That's all.

Four weeks: since they'd met, since his diagnosis and the amputation news. Four weeks since that hotel room, since—well, the details came back to him with the sequel being so near, and he shifted from foot to foot in the line, peeking over the older woman in front of him and earning an elderly glare. He smiled sheepishly but failed to charm her, and she turned her back to him with a harrumph.

His phone vibrated in his pocket and he scrambled to check her response—an address. Fuck yes.

Half an hour later, Hiccup was standing in the beige hall of an apartment building, staring at the number 7 in black plastic beneath the peephole of her door. He knocked.

* * *

><p>"Shit," said Astrid, nearly blinding herself with the eyeliner pen. Another knock, the front door. It had to be him. Continuing to swear under her breath, she shoved all of her make-up in the bag and stuck it under the sink, leaving the bathroom counter free—in the twenty minutes since she'd gotten his text, she'd also hastened to clear the floor of her bedroom and do the dirty dishes in the sink and make herself halfway presentable. Looking at herself in the mirror now, with her hair down and her clothes just the tee and skirt she'd thrown on after work, she decided it would have to do. More than being concerned with what he thought of her—he'd want her, surefire—she didn't want to feel naked around him. Be naked, definitely. But there were walls that needed to stay standing. Make-up might've been a trivial barrier, but she could be trivial, when it came to shielding her pride.<p>

A third knock. Getting needy. She flipped off the light and went down the hall to the foyer, glancing behind her. Maybe she ought to insist they go to the hotel. The apartment thing… she'd barely relented. After the dreams, and her conversation with Ruff, it wasn't smart to be giving him ideas.

But the bed thing got her. She'd spent enough time fantasizing about him in that bed. It was time to make something of it.

Inhale. Astrid undid the bolt and opened the door.

Before she could speak, Hiccup dropped his bag and stepped in, jamming his mouth against hers hard enough that their front teeth collided awkwardly, though the hitch didn't slow him. He wrapped his wide hands around her shoulders and, since her lips had parted at the sight of him, took advantage of their openness, tongue slipping over her bottom lip. Her arms snaked under his blazer, fists gripping his shirt as he drew her toward him, deepening the kiss; he would've been on top of her if she hadn't kissed back just as hard. Astrid sucked the air from his mouth when she put space between them.

"You aren't even going to say hello to me?" They were both panting.

"That was my hello."

She couldn't even manage a dirty look, she just swallowed hard and shook her head. "Get your shit inside."

He grabbed his bag from the hall and brought it in. She caught the smile on his face—not a smirk or a leer but a smile. "Do you live alone?" he asked, observing the row of shoes by the entrance. Astrid shut her eyes, turning away from him.

"I have a roommate. She'll be at work for the next few hours."

An arm wound around her waist from the back, and he drew the hair off her neck to press his lips there. Sort of uncanny, the solidity of his body right there behind her, the hand stroking her stomach, the sound of breathing that wasn't her own. The arousal came on so suddenly when they were together, it blazed the air any room they shared, and here he was again. "It's been a long month, hasn't it?" he murmured. The faint pressure on her lower back.

"You promised me something," she said, letting her head fall back.

"I know. I'm keeping that promise."

"Then what the fuck are we doing?" And Astrid grabbed his hand and dragged him down the hall, to her room. She'd already set the lights low, just the little lamp on her beside table. Hiccup still at her back, she tugged her shirt over her head and in the same moment felt him drag down her skirt and underwear in a single motion, dropping to the floor by her feet. It surprised her enough that she swung around to glare at him, kicking the clothes away unhooking her bra. Hiccup grinned.

"Just expediting." On his knees, he laid his fingertips on her hips, and pressed a kiss to the skin just beneath her navel. Astrid swallowed hard. "Go lie back."

The good news: from her position reclining on the pillows, she got to watch him undress at the foot of the bed, guiding the blazer off his shoulders. Undoing each button on his shirt with such zeal his hands shook, and it took that much longer to get free. By the time he started to kick off his jeans he'd grown so impatient he got rid of the last pant leg while crawling toward her, on hands and knees, mouth open and ready. Begging to be made useful.

First he came up to briefly kiss her lips, propped up on a single arm anchored by her shoulder, his free hand cupping her cheek. And he started to run his mouth down her front, along her collarbone, sucking hard on a nipple, so she had to bite back a whimper. "You better be as good at this as you said you were."

He released her breast and looked up, grinning again, thoughtful. "Clearly nothing I say is going to convince you, so let me show you." To her surprise, the grin faded a smidge as he dipped two fingers between her folds and felt the slickness already overwhelming her. By the time he drew his hand away his expression had gone serious, and he met her eye with a hard gaze as he raised his fingers to his mouth and suckled, until they were clean, or rather coated in his saliva.

_Disgusting_, she thought, feeling herself grow even wetter.

He went back to kiss her, this time her stomach, with a little nip to the soft skin that made her dig her nails into the quilt. And his mouth was on her hip, and on her thighs, and she let him spread her legs and drag her toward him, as he lowered his head. A beautiful head, a fine crop of hair, she ran fingers through it and burrowed back into the pillows, taking a ragged breath. With a downward glance she could see him there, between her legs, where he belonged. An image of perfection, except he wasn't moving, and she needed that, she needed him to get to _work_. Astrid waited. She felt another small kiss on her inner thigh.

"Any day now," she told the shadows on the ceiling.

The next kiss found warm wetness. She inhaled quickly, almost a gasp. And he did it again, a timid gesture, a flirtation. And then lips moved against her, and then a long, deft lick, along the entire length of her, and her eyes fluttered shut. So he was pretty good, lapping up and down, pressing kisses around her opening and then sliding his mouth over it to thrust his tongue inside. He flicked her clit just once and she did gasp, the tease inflated her, she was ready to start coming. She'd been ready for a while, after all, probably weeks. But he went slow—lick after lick, each one careful to suggest what firepower he hadn't yet unleashed, but never giving her exactly what she wanted, not right away. She felt petulant; she groaned in frustration. He swirled around her clit on another pass and then let his teeth graze her, and Astrid bucked off the mattress, crying out, panting now at every touch, absurdly ready when he finally took the little nub between his lips and rolled and sucked it for her to come. She was slicked in sweat and writhing; a hand snuck up her torso and she tried to suck the finger in her mouth but dissolved into moans. She was loud, she had the instance of a thought that there were neighbors who could hear, but the feeling rushing through her didn't care.

When it was over, he took back that finger and thrust it inside to bring her to a second orgasm. She'd barely been able to stop squirming from the first, and he had to pin her hips to the mattress with his other hand in order to keep his mouth around her clit. Her lower half felt incredible—the psychological satisfaction of him down on her in the bed where she'd gotten off again and again imagining it, and the reality being so much more mind-blowing than the fantasy, her muscles gliding and contracting and burning off tightness. It dwindled, she was jelly. Loose and empty. She couldn't open her eyes. She sensed something shifting above her and she pried open her vision to find Hiccup leaning down to kiss her, his chin and nose and lips shiny from her. Muttering, "Astrid, Astrid." They kissed for a long time, an easy, slippery kind of kiss, until her brain had begun to reboot. He tasted like her, not like anything else, not even like scotch.

He dragged his lips to her neck and she managed to say, "Holy shit," which was something she felt like people had been saying a lot lately in regards to Hiccup.

"Live up to your expectations?" Her skin and hair muffled his voice. She was formulating a clever response—it took longer after two climaxes like that—when he pulled up and hung above her.

He was doing it again. The smiling. Not smirking or leering. _Smiling_. Affectionately. And… staring at her. With reverence. The same reverence she'd felt in his tongue a minute ago, the same reverence that was supposed to be impossible from a one-night stand in a hotel room with someone who lived hundreds of miles away. It wasn't the reverence of a stranger and it wasn't the smile of a man who wanted to do nothing more than stick it in you—because he hadn't, had he? He'd come and seen and conquered. And he was still _kissing_ her, he was getting on his knees for her.

"Don't look at me like that," she blurted, seized by the memory of her dreams, and the growing understanding that it was going to be very, very hard to stop the nightmare scenario she and Ruff had outlined from becoming reality. Hard but not impossible—at least that was what she would believe until she'd had his cock, since the vacancy between her legs ached.

"What?" he said, smile fading.

"All goopy-eyed, it's—just stop it."

"Do I have goop in my eyes?" he asked stupidly, and Astrid heard the voice from their phone call, the version of him that was too weird and funny to offend. He started wiping at his face and she batted the arm away.

"Not like that." With Hiccup giving her a puzzled frown, Astrid made a split-second call to cut this conversation off before it could begin. "No more talking."

"I mean, we tried that last—"

"For real this time. If you speak from now on, I'm not seeing you anymore."

He sat back on his knees, searching her face for clues as to what was going on, but she could feel the hardened ambivalence in her expression. "Okay," he said in a small, defeated voice. "Then I won't speak." He got all endearing when he was pathetic, and the combination threatened her. This had to be the right decision. No words, no chance for him to charm her, just fucking. It was all she wanted from him, anyway, right?

Thrown off by the new rule, Hiccup took a long moment to crawl back on top of her. His Adam's apple rose and fell in his throat, and he pushed a lock of sweat-licked hair off his forehead. They both had a beautiful sheen on their skins, she saw, which gleamed in the yellow light from her little lamp. Delicately, precisely, he kissed her beneath her ear, and then drew away. Wearing a tiny frown, his face contorted with the quiet shamed expression of someone shove back in their place. _Stop making me feel guilty_, she thought furiously.

"I know I'm not supposed to talk, but do you have a condom, or should I…" He glanced at the door, beyond which sat his duffel bag.

She shook her head. "Nightstand drawer."

He gave a little nod and scooted to the side, leaving her to contemplate his pout, how genuinely sad he seemed to be shushed, how he had cancer—cancer!—and she wasn't even going to let him gab at her during sex because he might end up saying something nice.

Hiccup retrieved the little plastic square from the drawer and moved back to Astrid, who quickly grabbed it from him. "Roll over," she demanded, her palm on his chest to force the adjustment if he resisted, but he fell on his back with astonished ease. So maybe she couldn't let Hiccup talk, maybe that was too dangerous, but she didn't have to keep feeling guilty about the silent treatment when she could make it up to him so easily; she tugged on his boxers and he shimmied to get free; and then she leaned down, toward his hips.

"Holy fuck."

Astrid glanced up to see him gulping, gripping the headboard behind him. He was hard enough that the feeling of her breath on his erection must have maddened him. A smirk found Astrid's lips—the look he was giving her, the shortness of breath—if she had let him speak he would have begged. That was good. She took him in her mouth, as much as she could at once, and he swore again loudly. Swearing wasn't going to count, she decided; she liked it when he was too incoherent to get his tongue all the way around the word _shit_. She slid her lips back down his length, inch-by-inch, as steady as manageable when he kept thrusting back into her. She'd released him and started licking the tip when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm going to come," he gasped. Astrid let herself be pushed away and sat back licking her lips.

"I thought that was the point."

"I need to fuck you now." Chest heaving in a way that made Astrid dizzy, he climbed over her, pressing her on to her back roughly. He snatched the condom from where she'd dropped it earlier and tore it open. "I can do your mouth later." To answer him, Astrid shrugged and spread her legs, getting a whimper out of him as he rolled on the rubber. The throbbing in her cunt came back in a stab of want, she needed to have and be had. And he hung over her, positioning himself, and glanced at her again with a desperate squint.

"No talking," she whispered, not sure if Hiccup had heard her or if the finger tracing her opening had distracted him to the point of non-function. If it had, it didn't last—a second later she felt him sink into her, and they exhaled in tandem. Her eyes fell shut as she arched at the fullness, the one that extended beyond having him buried in her, the one that considered also the fit of his hips against hers and the remarkably tender way he kissed her temple and ear and nose and then found her lips. No tongue, nearly chaste. The fullness that was sweet and good, everything she had been afraid of with him. Overcome by the strangest feeling, Astrid turned her head to see him, to meet his eye. Hiccup looked back at her, equally moved, brows lifting in confusion and uproar. They stared at each other like that, muted by the intensity of what was happening between them, the thing that made her want to die when she remembered he wouldn't be here tomorrow. _Don't think, just kiss him_.

So she did, dragging them together with her hand on the back of his neck. Stirred back into action, Hiccup started to move inside her, and harder once they broke the kiss and he could raise himself above her for better leverage. But this meant they were looking at each other again, and fuck all, he just needed to be banned from putting his eyes on her. Talking or no he communicated volumes with a look, and every flinch of his hips as he gazed at her beneath him said _I like you_ or _I could care _or _I've been thinking about you_. And he "said" these things in a keening kind of tone, as he drove in and out of her, like maybe he could fuck her into wanting him in return, or fuck the affection out of himself in case she wasn't going to say it back. Not that she would even know how, when the only sound struggling out of her was a low moan, over and over, she moaned and moaned and ground her hips against his.

In spite of her dreams, or perhaps as they'd predicted, it felt good. To be wanted in a way that was all at once sexual and romantic and neither of those things, strictly personable, strictly about having _someone _beside you. To know that she was someone worth having. No, not having—knowing. Someone worth knowing. And maybe it was the oncoming ecstasy of her orgasm, and maybe it was the noise he made above her—a guttural groan, a bestial noise, which set her perfectly on edge—but Astrid wanted him like that, too. She just didn't know how to show him when he was so busy showing her. She ran her hands up his torso, touching the muscles that churned everywhere, until her palms were slick with his sweat. He drew back on to his knees and dragged her hips along with him, stoking her even more deftly than before. Her own muscles began to churn, then, her lower abdomen tightening significantly, and as it built her eyes screwed shut until she recalled him, how he'd been about to come before and had wanted _this_ instead, to save his. A glance at his face showed her his desperation tenfold. There were no sentences there, now—just little pants, like _please, please_, and he kept grasping at her hips even as the orgasm wrung her whole being, internalized arson, consuming her whole. The best kind of burning up. She screamed, trying to say his name, only getting out the first letter, "H…", before her throat turned it into something incomprehensible. He bucked into her hard, finding his own release with a sound that nearly drowned out hers. It melted all the distress from his face, opened his beautiful mouth wide.

Astrid leaned forward, or made an attempt, wanting to kiss him. But he was still thrusting to get her finished, and the last wave of the climax tuckered her out, so she collapsed back to the covers, gasping. Hiccup's shoulders slumped but he stayed sitting up, now still, catching his breath. They'd been fucking at almost a ninety-degree angle. Another time she might've laughed, but nothing seemed funny right now.

He pulled out of her and got off the bed and she shut her eyes. Probably getting rid of the condom or something, Astrid told herself she didn't care. She ran her legs against the softness of her quilt, liking the tactile sensation, feeling physically lazy and sensually stimulated. And emotionally uncertain. The mattress beside her dimpled, a new heat inches away, the return of Hiccup. His breathing was uneven. The fear gripped her that he might be unwell and her eyes snapped open—but he looked fine, he was just scowling at the ceiling. Sensing her gaze on him, he turned to look at her, and she snapped her head away just in time to avoid meeting his eye.

She didn't want to speak first. He probably didn't want to, either, since it was _his_ emotion, wasn't it? It was the look on _his_ face when he'd been on top of her. Except she didn't know what her own face had looked like—maybe she had said, just as clearly, _I want you too_. Astrid could remember that sentiment. She could remember seeing the truth about what was going on here, between them.

His hand found her arm and trailed up it, and she felt his lips on her shoulder. "Astrid."

God, she couldn't, she just _couldn't_ admit to this right now. It was too unwieldy and painful and temporary. No good could come of this, of the two of them, and she'd been a fool to believe she could stop it before it got out of hand.

So she should make him leave. She should throw all his clothing at him and shove his bag in his hands and send him out the door.

But, fuck, the sensation of his mouth on her skin felt fine. _Don't think, just kiss him_. And she did.


	7. Chapter 7

Hiccup was starting to put some things together.

He'd wanted to see her apartment and he liked it. The walls were mint green and none of the décor matched. It flippantly defied the aesthetic aspirations he'd been coached to revere, and he needed more defiance, it appealed to him.

"Do you like to ski, Astrid?"

They sat under the harsh lights of a scuzzy, fast Mediterranean place. She hadn't been able to think of another quick meal in the neighborhood that met his dietary restrictions, but he didn't mind and she didn't apologize. She didn't say much of anything at all, actually. They had spent the last two and a half hours since his arrival in relative silence; it would kill him before any disease did.

Astrid looked up from her gyro. "What?"

"In your room. You have a couple of things, they looked like ski trophies." They'd shared a shower before going out, where she shoved him back against the tile and finished what he hadn't let her finish before, and then she turned her back on him and washed her hair like he wasn't even watching. Hiccup got out and toweled off, and while he waited he sat on the end of her bed and stared at the photographs and accolades crowding the room.

Her brow furrowed in annoyance. Mad that he'd noticed. He was sort of mad he'd noticed, too. "I used to ski competitively. It's how I ended up in Colorado for my B.A."

"That's cool," he said, earnestly, but it sounded stupid. Everything he said around her sounded stupid—even all the stuff he'd only considered saying sounded stupid. He felt insecure; he felt fifteen again. He kept trying to climb back toward the new self he'd carved, toward the reckless cocky fast-talking, how he'd won over every woman in his life since he was a junior in college and Heather took him under her wing. But something about this afternoon had shaken his confidence, and considering he'd never quite seen someone eat a gyro _angrily_ before, he thought it might have shaken Astrid, too.

He'd realized was he didn't just want to know what Astrid's apartment looked like. He wanted to know more than that, he wanted to know everything, because a part of him insisted he couldn't be feeling what he was feeling until he did. "Do you have siblings?"

"Uh, a brother."

"Older or younger?"

"Younger."

"What's he do?"

"He's a senior in high school. He's a lot younger."

"Oh yeah? Where'd you grow up?"

She glared at him. "What, are you putting together a file on me or something?"

"Come on, Astrid," he said, pleading, trying his best to communicate with desperation what he couldn't quite find the words to say outright.

Still glaring, she threw the rest of her pita back to her plate, like she'd lost her appetite. "Come on what?"

"I think we should get to know each other better!"

"Why, why should we do that?"

He stabbed a falafel, struggling to stay levelheaded when he could see so clearly willful ignorance in the way she stuck out her chin and stared him down. "Astrid."

Bizarrely, she laughed. It was a sad sound. "You say my name too much, you have to stop doing that."

"You…" She met his eye, she dared him to say it and let her tear him apart. He thought he could bear that. She had the most delicate features, a petite nose, a plump lower lip fit for biting. "I figured it out," he announced.

"Figured out what?" she said slowly.

"How to tell the difference, between wanting someone sexually and wanting them romantically. You know how you know?" Hiccup leaned over the table, intent, and saw a blip of hesitation in her steely exterior. "You just do. And maybe it hits you when you first meet them in the airport, and maybe it hits you when you're in bed with them, feeling…" Sucking his lip, he sat back, curbed by what had rushed him two hours ago when she'd lain beneath him, the realization that the sex was better than any sex he'd ever had and still not good enough. "It doesn't matter. When it hits you it does and after that point, there's no use pretending it didn't. There's no use pretending you don't know what I'm talking about."

Astrid stared across at him, eyes wide, nostrils flaring, mouth hard. And that was—whatever, he had nothing else to throw at her, he'd run out of pathetic attempts to reason. "All right, then," she said, finally, lifting her head. "You want to get to know me better? I've cheated." His stomach went hollow. "I cheated on my college boyfriend. I haven't been in a serious relationship since. I suck at them. I'm lonely but I've never met anyone who didn't make me want to be alone, after a while." With her chest heaving and her bright blue eyes so round, she looked like she had transcended sanity, somehow manic but blindingly lucid. "I'm not a nice girl, Holden Haddock. I am not going to save you, or—or heal you. Or distract you. I'm going to make things worse."

He would have said that she'd already made them better, but he didn't want to reinforce her point, because she was _wrong_, she was so wrong, he couldn't figure out how or why but he could tell by the twisting of his gut when she'd said it. "I told you, I like mean. And I like women, not girls."

"You have no idea what you're doing," she said, shaking her head.

"So what?" he managed, smiling hysterically. "Your solution is to do everything the same but tell me to shut my mouth while I'm on top of you?"

"What, you want me to save you from _me_, too? I guess that's more reasonable than expecting me to cure cancer."

He raised a finger. "First of all, go fuck yourself." A second finger. "Second of all, sorry I told you about the cancer, sorry I haven't told anyone else—it was an accident, I swear. It just fell out of my mouth." That bar seemed worlds away from here. He sort of wanted to go back, if only because he could experience everything with Astrid a second first time, and make it clear that he didn't kid when he said he liked her.

"Then why haven't you told them yet?" she cried, raising her voice loud enough that he remembered they were in public. The only other patron was seated across the room with his headphones on, but the woman working behind the counter glanced away from them uncomfortably. "If it's not important that I'm the only one who knows, then why am I the only one who knows? It's been over a month, right? I mean, what the fuck!"

Hiccup swallowed hard. "Because!" Discomforted by—all of this, the whole conversation, really—he fell back in his chair, frowning. Hysteria straining his throat. "Once I tell them… it's happening, my future is set, and I don't fucking want that, do I? I don't want to be… I hate that this is happening to me, so much." This was the most honest thing he'd ever said about the cancer, to anyone, even to himself. It made him sick, the thought of turning around to face reality made him sick. Or maybe that was the painkillers, it got harder to tell everyday.

A long silenced passed between them. Hiccup stared at the saltshaker on the table. His eyes started to water. _You were born early, you were so small_, his mother liked to remind him, _but you grew up tall, and strong, look at you. _What was he going to say to her? Sorry, Mom, you were wrong!

"They can mourn with you," came Astrid's voice, back to its normal volume, or even quieter. She seemed tired. He rubbed his face.

"Why is this so important to you?"

"I don't guess it is that important to me." He wonder if that was true, and then he wondered if he only hoped it wasn't because the thought of being important to her in any way made his chest swell. "I just don't know how you can expect me to believe you when you say none of _this_—" She gestured loosely at him, maybe indicating the wetness of his eyes, maybe indicating the two of them. "—has anything to do with the fact that I know and nobody else does. It seems… I don't know, it's just really fucking hard to believe, when you've got no one to talk to and you show up at my door and…"

"And make love to you?" Astrid practically jumped out of her seat, somewhere between hilarity and horror.

"Don't call it that!"

His face—the fuck, it felt warm, was he _blushing_? "How would you describe it, then!" Not just sex, she had to give him that, and maybe _make love_ was a little cloying but it was… close, he could admit. Though he wasn't used to being the romantic in the relationship, to exposing his heart. He wasn't used to relationships where hearts got exposed, really. Perhaps that was why this, with her, felt so radically different.

Astrid seemed to recognize the difficulty of naming what had happened, she shifted in her seat and pursed her lips. "I'd describe it as intense, all right?"

"Intense." Well, yeah, it had been. His eyes drifted to the floor, thinking what the rest of the evening might have in store for them. "You should believe it," he told her. "I don't know how to convince you. But I'm not—it's not about the cancer, I fucking swear." He looked up at her. "_You_ don't even have cancer. And I know it's not just me." Astrid's eyes fell to her lap.

"I don't think you should read too much into it. It's just chemical."

"Chemical," he echoed.

"Yeah. Something about our pheromones that clicks, or something."

"Yeah, it's _just_ an instantaneous physiological connection, I'll make sure to write that one off." He was going to lose it, he really, really was. It fell quite between them again, and he finished off a cold falafel, scowling at the plate.

"If I were them, I would want to know." Astrid was addressing him intently. "Your family, I mean. And your friends. And it would hurt so much that you didn't want me to know. Because I'd want—to be there for you, if you needed it. I would want you to trust me. People don't like it when you shut them out." She tried to smile. "I know this from personal experience."

Hiccup took a moment to turn this advice over in his head. It made sense, didn't seem revolutionary. She was right. Not that her being right didn't made it any easier, but she was. And it made him wonder. "Why'd you cheat, Astrid?" he asked.

"Why," she snorted. Covering up a real emotion.

"Yeah. Isn't there usually a reason, if you're not a bad person? Which you're not."

The forced humor fled her face. She gulped, shrugged. "I didn't love him. I was twenty and I didn't know how else to say it."

"Did you tell him?"

"Yeah. And," an ironic smile lighted her face, "you know something? He said we could get through it. And that was when I was like, 'shit, I've been trying to get out of this all along, haven't I?' So I said he deserved better."

Hiccup pushed his soda cup an inch across the table, smirking. "Did he?"

"Probably. But he was boring."

"At least I'm not boring."

"No, you're—" Astrid glanced at him and started to laugh, eyes skimming back out across the restaurant. "No. You're not boring."

He raised a fist in mock victory. "Yes. Point Haddock."

"Yeah, okay." Smiling, she balled up her napkin and threw on to the paper plate with the remains of her dinner, and he did the same. "Are you ready to go?"

"Sure."

She stood and grabbed his plate along with her own, balancing it neatly on her arm to carry it to the trash.

"Wow, look at you."

Astrid dumped the food and threw him an unmoved look. "I'm a waitress." They headed for the door.

"I thought you were a doctoral candidate!"

"I'm that too. But I'm also poor and TAing doesn't cover everything, so."

"You're a TA." It was a lovely, cool night, cool enough he pulled on his blazer as they went out on the sidewalk. "You help the professors and grade papers and have students, then?"

"That is what a TA does, yes," Astrid replied flatly, unimpressed by his knowledge.

Flirting, he leaned toward her. "What if I were one of your students?"

"You? Gender studies?" She gave him a once-over. "Sounds like a good idea, actually. Providing it stuck."

"Hey! I could learn."

"Sure," she said, sounding skeptical, but they were both grinning. On an impulse, he closed the gap between them, kissing her lightly. When he pulled away her expression had darkened.

"Bad?" he muttered, as though that were impossible.

"I think when we get back to the apartment you should probably go check in to your hotel," she said efficiently, and turned away from him to walk into the parking lot. He caught up with her in a stride.

"Are you going to come visit me after I'm settled in?"

"Maybe. Isn't your meeting super early tomorrow? You should get some sleep."

Their eyes met over the top of her car, as they prepared to get in. Astrid's expression read clearly, _Don't fucking try it_. But he wanted to whine. After everything they'd said and done tonight, didn't it just make sense? Weren't they past calling this a hook-up?

He tried it. "Can I sleep at your place?"

She looked to her left, jaw clenched. "No."

"Are you—"

"I meant what I said, okay?" Astrid wrenched open the driver's side door and fell into the seat, so he heard her voice as he mirrored her slowly. "Maybe you don't see what you're doing, but I can't take the risk that you're going to—"

"Die?" he asked, plunking down beside her.

She gave him a hard look, and then shoved her keys in the ignition. "Next time you're in town, I'm meeting you at the hotel."

* * *

><p><em>Today's flight is oversold. We are looking for passengers willing to give up their seats, if your travel plans are flexible.<em>

Hiccup sat by the gate, leaning on his fist, eyes half-closed. He hadn't slept well. The hotel bed was too cold and empty and clean. Not lived in. He'd only spent half an hour in Astrid's, but he was sure of its superiority. He thought of its smell and inhaled deeply.

_We can have you on the earliest flight tomorrow, and hotel vouchers are available._

He'd come out of his meeting this morning to find a text from her, wishing him good luck and a safe flight. He stared at it for too long. The bosses liked his presentation, though he felt distracted and nervous through the whole thing. One of them drew him aside afterward and said they were considering more projects for him. That meant more time here, more visits to Astrid. If she'd still want to see him after the surgery. Considering her attempts to buck him up about the cancer situation, he doubted she'd reject him on any shallow basis, but—but he didn't know what to expect from anyone after the surgery.

_Any passenger willing to give up their seat will automatically receive ten thousand frequent flyer miles with no blackout dates._

Tell his parents. He had to. He could only wait so much longer. The procedure was scheduled for just after Thanksgiving, he couldn't go there for Christmas with a surprise like that. Ha, ha. He already missed her, he was already sorry to be home. He could already feel the misery of the office tomorrow morning. Of having to see Heather. Of having to act like he didn't feel screwed over by that whole company. And he wanted Astrid. Fuck, he had to stop thinking about her, it wouldn't make the next couple of months any easier. The PA rang out again, starting to get on his nerves.

_Again, the flight is oversold. We're looking for passengers interested in giving up their seat for miles and arranged rebooking._

Finally, he heard what they were saying, and he woke up.

* * *

><p>"The next person who calls <em>Gender Trouble <em>a 'novel' is getting a D," she announced.

Unsurprisingly, the paper in Astrid's hands did not respond to her threat. She threw it down on the kitchen table and rubbed her eyes hard—she'd been at this for three hours now, all the letters were starting to blur together, and her red pen grew meaner the crabbier she felt.

"Are you talking to yourself?" rang Ruff's voice from the living room.

"No, I'm talking to a bunch of college students who think the word 'book' is too good for them."

"You know they're not here, right?"

"Yeah," she grumbled. "I need a break. I'm opening some wine."

"Sounds smart!"

Astrid pulled a bottle of white from the fridge and set about uncorking it. After yesterday, she'd donned sweatpants and a huge t-shirt and had her hair braided sloppily to the side. A day of being watched and wanted by the truly insatiable Hiccup—she was ready to recede into herself. She'd woken up this morning and looked at her face in the mirror and thought, _perfect, I look like shit_. Now she yawned hugely and started to pour out her drink, _glug glug glug_.

Pounding from the hall: someone at the front door.

"I've got it, Ruff," she called, quickly corking the wine.

"No, let me, I think it's Eret." Her roommate's voice moved from the living room into the corridor. "I've been leaving our garbage by his door so he'll be forced to come and talk to me." Astrid nearly spit out some wine laughing, and carried her glass back to the table. She heard the front door swing open, and Ruff went, "Oh, it's… _you_."

Grinning, Astrid peeked her head out of the kitchen. "Hi, Eret—"

Except it wasn't Eret. Her face fell.

Hiccup squinted at Ruff. He had his bag slung over his shoulder, wearing the same jacket as the day before. The stubble on his neck and jawline a little thicker. "Sorry, do I know you?"

"No, but I sure do know you." Ruff turned slowly to look at Astrid, talking through a pained smile. "Oh my god. I just remembered I wanted to go over to my brother's place tonight. How convenient."

Astrid raised a slow hand to her face. She wasn't wearing any make-up, not a drop, her hair… fuck. What was he doing here?

His eyes were on Astrid, but he spoke to Ruff: "No, I'm sorry, you don't have to leave on my behalf. I'm Hiccup."

"Hiccup," Ruff repeated, tossing Astrid a hilarious look.

"Holden," he elaborated glumly.

"I'm Olivia, but people call me Ruff, because that's how I like it." She winked and grabbed her keys from the side table. "And I'm definitely leaving. If Eret comes by tell him to hold on to that rage, I want to see it. Buh-bye!" Ruff pushed past Hiccup into the hall and disappeared. The front door sat wide open. He hadn't even come inside.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, her throat feeling like she hadn't spoken for hours.

"My flight was oversold. I gave up my seat." He inhaled and pulled out his phone, waving it at her. "I'm going to call my mom and dad. I was kind of hoping I could stay here tonight." Astrid shut her eyes. Stupid. So fucking stupid, all of this. He was stupid for coming back when she'd made him leave for the greater good of them both, and she was stupid for being glad to have him. Even for a night. They made a night together last like a year in the lives of other people.

"Just get inside, already." She moved to shut the door behind him, not meeting his eye. "You can have the couch."


	8. Chapter 8

**It has a happy ending. I swear.**

* * *

><p>Astrid watched another serving of wine swirl into the crystalline curve of her glass.<p>

"Do you want a drink?"

"Ah—no more drinking, I'm on a new pill…" She glanced over her shoulder at Hiccup, standing by the arch into the living room, giving her a smile she left unreturned.

"Water? Juice?"

"Juice?" He giggled his dorky giggle. "Am I five?"

"Do you want the fucking juice or not?" Hiccup shrunk.

"Yes. I would love some juice."

"Hmph. Go sit. I'll bring it to you." Astrid turned to the fridge and started moving things around until the orange juice appeared. She carried the drinks into the living room, where Hiccup now sat on the couch, scrolling through his phone, and she set his down on the side table hastily before starting down the hall. But Hiccup's voice stopped her.

"Where are you going?" Oh, to squash that sliver of panic in his stupid voice! She swung around and regarded him with pursed lips.

"Did you want me to sit here and watch you have an incredibly important phone conversation with your parents?"

From the looks of it, he hadn't considered how awkward this might be. "No. I guess not." His wide-eyed gaze fell to the floor. "I need my mom to go feed my cat."

She scratched her head, not understanding what this had to do with anything. "Okay. Sure."

He nodded several times, hesitating, then sniffed and picked up his phone. "Cool. Here I go. Thanks for the juice."

"Yeah. I'll be in my room if you…" Perhaps she ought to stop offering to be there should he need anything. She forced a quick smile. "There are pillows and blankets in the hall closet for when you're ready to go to sleep." Now she left before he had a chance to speak out and stop her.

Of course, it turned out to be wishful thinking: that he might just let this lie, and go to bed without complaint. Without _her_. An hour later there came a light knock at her door; Astrid had heard the distorted sound of his voice from the living room up until five minutes earlier, presumably when his conversation had ended. She curled atop the covers with her stack of papers, the work no easier than before he'd arrived.

"Come on in."

He appeared there, backlit by the bright light from the hall. She could just make out the redness rimming his eyes. "Can I join you?" he muttered. No way of knowing precisely what he meant by this, but she knew her answer.

"No."

Hiccup licked his lips, gripping the doorknob. "You seem upset with me."

"I said I didn't want you sleeping here," she told him flatly.

"You could've said no when I came by."

"Ruff would've made me let you stay."

"You're not kicking me out now."

Astrid inhaled and looked to her right, brows knit. "Yeah. I don't know." Why _hadn't_ she made him leave? And why was she so certain she wouldn't do it now? That certainty was a knot too uncomplicated to untangle in the moment. "You are so…"

"Handsome?" he chimed, a hopeful little joke. Instinctively she rolled her eyes, which might've undermined the scowl on her face.

"Stubborn. I'm trying to _help_ you. I didn't say any of that stuff at the gyro place just because I don't want to deal with you. Though that's hardly fun." She looked back up and he was leaning on the doorjamb, hands in his pockets. Still half-smiling, for whatever reason. "Nothing can happen between us. You know that. At least, I think you do, because you're an adult who can… probably fathom that you live pretty far away from me."

Hiccup's expression didn't fade, but it flickered doubtfully. He sighed and shifted his weight with a wince. "Unfortunately, Astrid, what I was trying to say yesterday… something's already happened between us." The smile faded. He met her eye, but she couldn't hold the gaze for long, she swallowed hard and looked away. _Something's already happened between us_. Though going numb, she could feel her mouth fall open. "It's not easy," he added at her silence. "But that doesn't make it a bad thing."

"Of course it's a bad thing." The words popped out of her. He drew back, surprised by her sureness.

"I mean…"

"How was your phone call with your parents?" she asked, seeking a quick out.

"Fine, uh—they just… want to have lunch with me." She frowned: there it was again, that glossing of distress, like his crying before he came in here was a mere footnote to their present conversation. "Astrid, do you…" Hiccup stood up straight, seeming taller and older just then, crease in his brow. "Do you want to come watch a movie with me on the couch or something? No funny business?"

But what about _emotional _funny business? Was he going to put a bag over his head and not speak? Would that even work if he still sat beside her, breathing, radiating his very particular body heat? She sighed and dropped her head to her hands. "Okay. Let's watch a movie." Stupid. Both of them.

As she followed him into the living room, he turned around and said, "If nothing can happen between us, does that mean we can't be friends?"

"Friends," she repeated, grabbing the remote to flip on the TV. It appeared Ruff had once again been watching the home shopping network. "So what, you want to hang out and… not have sex?"

They exchanged a look, and burst out laughing.

"No, I don't… so, it sounds crazy."

"Yeah, because our entire relationship consists of having sex." Astrid flopped on to the sofa, and he lowered himself down beside her.

"I feel like that's kind of reductive."

"Well, you swore so much that you weren't using me as a cancer dump, and what else is there?" She tossed him the remote, and it bounced off his chest. "Here, find us something to watch."

Hiccup, stalling, examined the buttons of the remote. His face had gone greyer, she noted, though perhaps it was a trick of the light, casting such pallor to the skin and dark circles beneath his eyes. "I don't really want to watch a movie, you know." His voice sounded as tired as he looked. _It's the disease_, she thought, and pulled her legs toward herself as if cowering from him. _Oh, please don't be vulnerable. Please don't make me feel anything_. She hated feeling things, and recently, around him, there had been… so much of that. "I want to go on a hike," he croaked. "But I can't because I'm exhausted, and my leg hurts if I walk for too long. I just feel like I should be making use of the whole two-leg situation while I can."

"When's your surgery, exactly?"

"December 1st. Nine AM, Saint Francis Memorial." He said it like a tiny prayer he knew by heart.

"December 1st. Nine AM, Saint Francis Memorial," she echoed. It seemed like he meant it to echo, but he tossed her a skeptical smile.

"What, are you planning to be there?"

"Sorry," she said gently, not having the heart to say _no_ out loud. Hiccup just shrugged, he hadn't been expecting anything less.

"That's fine. I'm sure someone will be there." He didn't _sound_ sure, but she decided that this was not her problem.

They sat in a silence filled by the woman on the home shopping network, who was trying to sell a set of hideous matching his-and-hers watches. Astrid deliberately examined the seam of the couch cushions, until she spied his hand sneaking toward hers and instinctively recoiled, busying herself with snatching up the remote again.

"God, you're mopey."

"I have cancer!"

"You pull the cancer card _all_ the time now." He was laughing, she felt his arms slide around her waist while she attempted to channel surf, and he pulled her into his lap. "You're not the douchebag you were when I met you," she gasped, struggling half-heartedly from his kisses on the back of her neck. "It's a real turn-off."

"No it's not," he mumbled, squeezing her breast, and she inhaled sharply. His other hand slipped into the waistband of her sweats, suggestive; were they going to fuck on the sofa? Great, just great.

"I told you it's all about sex with us."

He froze. She hadn't said it to make him _stop_ or anything, she'd just wanted to be right—but she found herself expelled from his arms, from his lap.

"Hey!"

He was scrambling toward the other end of the couch, hands in the air innocently. "Hey what? We don't have to have sex—"

"I _like_ having sex!"

"I like making points!" A finger wagged inches from her nose. "No funny business. We're just going to watch a movie. And I'll stay on this end of the sofa, and you stay on that end. It's what friends do." With that, he settled with his arms over his chest, turning intently toward the television. The corners of his mouth curled upward slightly. Astrid sat there, staring at him with her jaw slack and her heart still racing from the neck kisses.

"Uh. I guess that's…" Shaking her head, she flopped back into her seat. It's what friends do! What, watch the woman on the home shopping network push a kitten-themed dinette set when they could be having mind-blowing sex?

"Those teacups have little cat ears," said Hiccup delightedly. It was the happiest she had ever seen him, and she'd watched him orgasm multiple times.

"Are you cutting me off?" she demanded, sweeping indignantly into his kitten-tea-cup reverie. Glancing sideways, he caught her glare but didn't seem to think much of it.

"Cutting you off?"

"From sex?"

He drew a deep breath and leaned toward her. "Astrid. We've been over this. You say nothing can happen between us, I say something already has. Something _other_ than sex," he added, anticipating her objection. "And I'll sit here and watch QVC with you until you're ready to admit the other exists. Because I like being around you." The way he said that—heavily. As though he needed to do this for more reasons than pursuing a new relationship with a woman from another city. She wondered what the phone call had been like for him earlier that night, if that had anything to do with it. If after everything he just wanted something simple and clean and pleasant—not that she, that _they_, could ever be any of those things, but bonding over bad television late at night was their best chance at pretending.

Turning to the television, he gulped, and dragged one of the couch pillows, hugging it. "So you like cat teacups, huh?"

* * *

><p>She woke up encircled by thin, freckled arms, inebriated by the comfort of the bed and the warm body beside hers and the sunlight coming in through the window. It was a sensory drowning, a feeling of contentment so pure it stayed all her rational thought. Astrid had been lonely, loneliness not being an emotion so much as an absence of an emotion. And lying there in the bed that morning, she felt the thing she'd been missing.<p>

And then she _really_ woke up. She remembered how they'd reached this point, how they talked for three hours with QVC droning in the background, how tired she'd gotten from laughing at his endless parade of stupid stories about his youth and tendency toward ridiculous relationships, how she'd drowsily caved when he begged to sleep in her bed. How remarkably small a bed like that could be when you were snugged in there with someone else, minus the stickiness of post-coital nudity. If only there existed an exact science for discerning who initiates a cuddle—or preventing a cuddle from happening in the first place. Because then, maybe, she could've avoided waking up fully clothed in the arms of an equally clothed Hiccup. Not since college had she done that, slept in a bed with a man without fucking him. _Something's already happened between us_.

She lay still, eyes wide open and on the ceiling, swallowing hard. Hiccup slept on—maybe she could extract herself and, if he remembered sleeping with her like this, he would think it had been a dream. As long as he didn't start dreaming about her, too; dreams had given her enough grief for one month.

Wincing, Astrid started to slide out from the embrace, but he made a tiny noise at the movement and stirred. Brilliant. The moment his arms shifted, she scrambled away from him, hoping he was too groggy to register the way they'd posed.

Hiccup blinked the sleep from his eyes, a lock of his reddish brown hair sticking up. Now rested, he looked healthier in the natural light, and he smiled at her. "Good morning."

"Mornin'," she said stiffly, and in a bit of an accent, for some reason? Hiccup squinted at her, smile breaking into a grin.

"Was that…"

"I'm going to make coffee," she announced, leaping from the bed. "I don't know if Ruff's here, so don't just walk around in boxers, okay?"

In the kitchen, she made the coffee with angry intensity, slamming cupboard doors and smacking about the machine. She didn't think her roommate was home after all, or she'd be complaining about Astrid's stomping, but her comment had been worth instilling some fear in Hiccup—knocking him down a few pegs. A morning after with Holden Haddock, and they hadn't even had sex, it was like… like all the things she'd sworn not to let this become had come to pass in a single night! She could've screamed, in frustration, in terror. She could've broken something—and she did, setting a mug against the counter so roughly the ceramic shattered everywhere. "Shit!"

"Do you need help?" That was Hiccup. She turned to see him standing in the door to the kitchen. Wearing pants. "Where's the dustbin?" Astrid refused to meet her eye for fear that he might see her eyes watering.

"Hall closet," she managed—somehow the air had left her lungs at his appearance, and she felt relieved to see him disappear again. Avoiding the shards of mug near her feet, she got another from the cupboard and stood sniveling at the coffee's dripping progress until Hiccup returned.

He cleaned up the destroyed cup in silence, dumped it in the trash, and asked her quietly if he could have some coffee, too. So she poured him a mug along with her own, and they sat at the kitchen table. Astrid read yesterday's newspaper. She didn't worry about what he had to do.

"Last night was the most fun I've had in a while." She shut her eyes. Why'd he have to speak? "And there was no alcohol or sex involved, that's amazing," he added, voice cracking. Astrid lowered her paper but words—she didn't have them, she _hated_ them. She remembered two nights earlier: _no talking_. Words or no, there seemed something inescapable about him. About the two of them. "Thanks for that."

"Thanks?" she echoed. Incredulity came easy to her.

"Yeah. I was very happy."

He was smiling. He looked it. Happy. Something surged in her throat.

"You're a selfish prick, you know that?"

So much for not having the words. She looked up from her coffee to find Hiccup gaping at her, and it was _infuriating_—how could he look so dopey? How could he be so _clueless_?

"I'm sorry?"

"You are. You only care about yourself, and how happy you were. You don't give a fuck about me." The anger that had exploded that mug against the counter crept into her voice—she was less her calculating self and more the pyre of indignation she became when wronged.

"That's not true!" he cried, clearly not understanding a fucking thing she had to say, which was so typical, he was just like the rest.

"You don't listen to me, I _told_ you—"

"Astrid, I'm sorry, you're just wrong about us—"

"How I'm feeling isn't wrong!" And there it was: she'd raised her voice. He sunk into his chair, cowed. "You keep coming here and talking to me and saying I'll… I have to _decide_ to be with you, asshole, stop trying to pester me into a goddamn relationship—that's not how this works."

Hiccup shook his head, maybe disagreeing with her, maybe disagreeing with his past self, so insistent in pursuing her. "I want you to make you happy, too, Astrid."

She seized on this, rising from her seat. "See, _see_, you don't want me to be happy, you want to _make_ me happy. You want to make my happiness about your happiness, you want to insert yourself in my life but like—but what happens when you're not there to make me happy anymore!" It was hard to say what she meant by this—if it was his being far away, or something worse—but it floored him nonetheless, stopped him short, ripped the words from his tongue. "_I'm_ the one that gets left behind, I'm the one who got pulled into some fucking dumb love affair I never even asked for." She had knocked backed her chair a foot when she stood, and now she steadied herself on it, inhaling deeply. "So what if I like you? It doesn't matter. Yeah, fine. I like you! You win. Enjoy your meaningless validation." Hiccup's gaze dropped to his lap. "It's not like I'm never going to like another person again." Funny how this sounded as though she were talking to herself. The chair shook under her grip.

Hiccup got to his feet. She could see in his face this wasn't a painless move. "Do you want me to go?"

"Yes."

"Is _that_ going to make you happy?"

"Yeah. Sure. Fucking ecstatic."

"All right," he said softly, glancing off into the hall. "It'll take me a few minutes to get my stuff together." So he vanished for a bit. She sat back down at the kitchen table. Her coffee was cold but the distance between her and the microwave seemed impassable. Like she might lose her way. When he came back, he had his bag slung over his shoulder and his expression was grave. "I get the feeling I'm not going to see you again."

She didn't even have a cutting reply. Not even a curt little 'yeah'—she thought if she spoke, she would cry, and that was unacceptable. So she shook her head, _no_, _don't come back_. And he'd get the message. And she'd deleted his number from her phone, or block it, or whatever it took to make sure she never had to hear from him again.

"Okay then," said Hiccup, sounding more than defeated. "I hope… you had a little fun, at some point. I'm—sorry, I guess. Bye, then. Astrid." He took a last long look at her, not one she returned, rapped his knuckles on the wall, and went down the corridor and out the front door.


End file.
